Rapidly Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates in Strongly Anharmonic Traps

Abstract

We study a rotating Bose-Einstein Condensate in a strongly anharmonic trap (flat trap with a finite radius) in the framework of 2D Gross-Pitaevskii theory. We write the coupling constant for the interactions between the gas atoms as $1/\epsilon^2$ and we are interested in the limit $\epsilon\to 0$ (TF limit) with the angular velocity $\Omega$ depending on $\epsilon$. We derive rigorously the leading asymptotics of the ground state energy and the density profile when $\Omega$ tends to infinity as a power of $1/\epsilon$. If $\Omega(\epsilon)=\Omega_0/\epsilon$ a ``hole'' (i.e., a region where the density becomes exponentially small as $1/\epsilon\to\infty$) develops for $\Omega_0$ above a certain critical value. If $\Omega(\epsilon)\gg 1/\epsilon$ the hole essentially exhausts the container and a ``giant vortex'' develops with the density concentrated in a thin layer at the boundary. While we do not analyse the detailed vortex structure we prove that rotational symmetry is broken in the ground state for ${\rm const.}|\log\epsilon|<\Omega(\epsilon)\lesssim \mathrm{const.}/\epsilon$.