Vortex proliferation in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless regime on a two-dimensional lattice of Bose-Einstein condensates.
We observe the proliferation of vortices in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless regime on a two-dimensional array of Josephson-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates. As long as the Josephson (tunneling) energy J exceeds the thermal energy T, the array is vortex free. With decreasing J/T, vortices appear in the system in ever greater numbers. We confirm thermal activation as the vortex-formation mechanism and obtain information on the size of bound vortex pairs as J/T is varied.
Schweikhard
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JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA.
Tung
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Cornell
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