Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 141
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40112-8

Regular Article

Exact matter-wave vortices in a driven optical lattice

Department of physics and Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Quantum Structures and Quantum Control of Ministry of Education, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, P.R. China

^a e-mail: whhai2005@yahoo.com.cn

Received: 1 March 2013
Received in final form: 25 April 2013
Published online: 16 July 2013

Abstract

We investigate vortex dynamics of a periodically driven Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a spatially two-dimensional optical lattice. An exact Floquet solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation is obtained for a certain parameter region which can be divided into the phase-jumping and phase-continuing regions. In the former region, the exact solution can describe spatiotemporal evolution of multiple vortices. For a small ratio of driving strength to optical lattice depth the vortices keep nearly unmoved. With the increase of the ratio, the vortices undergo an effective interaction and periodically evolve along some fixed circular orbits that leads the vortex dipoles and quadrupoles to produce and break alternatively. There is a critical ratio in the phase-jumping region beyond which the vortices generate and melt periodically. In the phase-continuing region, the condensate in the exact Floquet state evolves periodically without zero-density nodes. It is numerically demonstrated that the exact solution is stable under an initial perturbation for both parameter regions, except for a subregion of the phase-jumping region in which stability of the condensate is lost. However, the solution is structurally stable under a small parameter perturbation only for the phase-continuing region, while for the whole phase-jumping region the structural stability is destroyed. The results suggest a scheme for creating and controlling matter-wave vortices.