Topological creation of vortices and monopoles in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates

by Prof. Mikko Möttönen (Aalto)

Wednesday 21 Jul 2010, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

I will give a review of the theoretical and experimental studies on the so-called topological vortex formation, in which a vortex-free spin-1 BEC is manipulated adiabatically using external magnetic fields into a state which contains a multiply quantized vortex. Even vortex pumping can be obtained to create deterministically vortices with high quantum numbers. Very recently, we extended this idea for a non-trivial three-dimensional case, in which Dirac monopoles can be created. This observation takes BEC to have high potential for the first experimental observation of Dirac monopoles, analogs of magnetic monopoles, in any quantum field.