Title: Decay of a Dark Soliton into Vortex Rings in a Bose-Einstein Condensate
Summary:
Researchers at NIST have observed the decay of a dark soliton into vortex rings in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This phenomenon was predicted theoretically but had not been observed experimentally until now.
Key points:
1. Vortex rings are a fundamental quantum fluid excitation, similar to tornados and whirlpools, but with quantized circulation due to the single wavefunction describing all atoms in the quantum fluid.
2. Vortex rings were created by selectively removing filler atoms from a stationary dark soliton in a BEC, causing the soliton to decay into concentric vortex rings.
3. The resulting vortex rings were observed as dark spots in photographs of the BEC cloud, with two spots confirming the presence of a single vortex ring.
4. This research advances our understanding of quantum fluids and may have implications for future quantum technologies, such as quantum computing and quantum metrology.
Keywords: Quantized vortices, Quantum fluids, Bose-Einstein condensates
