Motion of a Solitonic Vortex in the BEC-BCS Crossover

• Main Authors: Ji, Wenjie (Contributor), Mukherjee, Biswaroop (Contributor), Cheuk, Lawrence W. (Contributor), Yefsah, Tarik (Contributor), Guardado Sanchez, Elmer (Contributor), Zwierlein, Martin Wolfram (Contributor), Ku, Mark J. H. (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (Contributor), Ku, Mark Jen-Hao (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2014-08-11T16:40:01Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We observe a long-lived solitary wave in a superfluid Fermi gas of [superscript 6]Li atoms after phase imprinting. Tomographic imaging reveals the excitation to be a solitonic vortex, oriented transverse to the long axis of the cigar-shaped atom cloud. The precessional motion of the vortex is directly observed, and its period is measured as a function of the chemical potential in the BEC-BCS crossover. The long period and the correspondingly large ratio of the inertial to the bare mass of the vortex are in good agreement with estimates based on superfluid hydrodynamics that we derive here using the known equation of state in the BEC-BCS crossover.
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
United States. Army Research Office. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative on Atomtronics
United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
United States. Office of Naval Research
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Optical Lattice Emulator Program
David & Lucile Packard Foundation