As the Earth rotates, the Coriolis force causes several oceanic and atmospheric waves to be trapped along the equator, including Kelvin, Yanai, Rossby, and Poincaré modes. It has been demonstrated that the mathematical origin of these waves is related to the nontrivial topology of the underlying hydrodynamic equations. Inspired by recent observations of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in bubble-shaped traps in microgravity ultracold quantum gas experiments, we show that equatorial modes are supported by a rapidly rotating condensate in a spherical geometry. Based on a zero-temperature coarse-grained hydrodynamic framework, we reformulate the coupled oscillations of the superfluid and the Abrikosov vortex lattice resulting from rotation by a Schrödinger-like eigenvalue problem. The obtained non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is topologically nontrivial. Furthermore, we solve the hydrodynamic equations for a spherical geometry and find that the rotating superfluid hosts Kelvin, Yanai, and Poincaré equatorial modes, but not the Rossby mode. Our predictions can be tested with state-of-the-art bubble-shaped trapped BEC experiments.
About the presenter
Dmitry Efimkin is a Scientific Research Associate at Monash University. He is interested in condensation of spatially separated electrons and holes and manifestations including dipolar superfluidity, as part of FLEET’s Research Theme 2, Exciton Superfluids.