title: Dynamics of a few corotating vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates.
abstract: We study the dynamics of small vortex clusters with a few (2-4) corotating vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates by means of experiments, numerical computations, and theoretical analysis. All of these approaches corroborate the counterintuitive presence of a dynamical instability of symmetric vortex configurations. The instability arises as a pitchfork bifurcation at sufficiently large values of the vortex system angular momentum that induces the emergence and stabilization of asymmetric rotating vortex configurations. The latter are quantified in the theoretical model and observed in the experiments. The dynamics is explored both for the integrable two-vortex particle system, where a reduction of the phase space of the system provides valuable insight, as well as for the nonintegrable three- (or more) vortex case, which additionally admits the possibility of chaotic trajectories.
authors.affiliation: Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Group, Computational Science Research Center, and Department of Mathematics and Statistics, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182-7720, USA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Navarro
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Carretero-González
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Torres
authors.forename: P G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Kevrekidis
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Frantzeskakis
authors.forename: M W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Altuntaş
authors.forename: D S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Hall