Scientific Achievement
A new mechanism of angular momentum transfer via a “corkscrew soliton sheet” in Bose-Einstein condensed (BEC) quantum fluids is theoretically demonstrated.
Significance and Impact
This finding may impact the study of rotating quantum fluids, from nanoscale ultracold atoms to cosmological-scale neutron-pair superfluids in neutron stars and galactic dark matter halos.
Research Details
- Simulated a static BEC merging with a rotating BEC in 3D space
- Showed that a soliton-like sheet (a topological quantum structure), resembling a corkscrew, spontaneously emerges at the interface and dominates in highly efficient angular momentum transfer
- Used the Center for Nanoscale Materials’s (CNM) Carbon cluster for part of the simulation work
Work was performed in part at CNM.
About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials
The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://science.osti.gov/User-Facilities/User-Facilities-at-a-Glance.
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