Vortex patterns in a fast rotating Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

For a fast rotating condensate in a harmonic trap, we investigate the structure of the vortex lattice using wave functions minimizing the Gross Pitaveskii energy in the Lowest Landau Level. We find that the minimizer of the energy in the rotating frame has a distorted vortex lattice for which we plot the typical distribution. We compute analytically the energy of an infinite regular lattice and of a class of distorted lattices. We find the optimal distortion and relate it to the decay of the wave function. Finally, we generalize our method to other trapping potentials.