Watching dark solitons decay into vortex rings in a Bose-Einstein condensate.
We have created spatial dark solitons in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in which the soliton exists in one of the condensate components and the soliton nodal plane is filled with the second component. The filled solitons are stable for hundreds of milliseconds. The filling can be selectively removed, making the soliton more susceptible to dynamical instabilities. For a condensate in a spherically symmetric potential, these instabilities cause the dark soliton to decay into stable vortex rings. We have imaged the resulting vortex rings.
Anderson
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JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder 80309-0440, USA.
Haljan
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Regal
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Feder
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Collins
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Clark
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Cornell
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