Scientists from around the world have created and observed a new class of vortices.
The first laboratory studies of these "exotic" whirlpools in an ultracold gas of atoms at temperatures as low as tens of billionth are detailed in a new paper.
The discovery may have exciting future implications for quantum information and computing.
The whirlpools of water down a bathtub drain are familiar to nature.
In quantum-mechanical systems, the circulation comes in quantized units. Physicists have long been fascinated by the strange properties of superfluidity and superconductivity.
The strange nature of the whirlpools is due to the quantum gas. The appearance of asymmetric worlds despite perfect underlying symmetries is one of the most interesting properties of physical theories. Molecules in a liquid arrange themselves into a periodic array when it is cold.
A honeycomb has a periodic array of cells with hexagonal symmetry, which is easily identified. The fluid medium used in this work has an internal set of hidden symmetries that are not visible to the naked eye. One of the team's ultracold gases had the fourfold symmetry of a square, and another had the four-sided die, which is familiar to players of fantasy games.
The mass flow and the underlying symmetry of the fluid interact in interesting ways.
The process can be left in the fluid if the positions of two vortices are changed. A rung in a ladder is linked by this trace.
"No ordinary fluids behave like this, and it might be that analogous objects only exist deep inside neutron stars," said Prof. Janne Ruostekoski. The team says that these creations go beyond the state-of-the-art.
The connections to the stranger domain of physics make our work appealing. Part of it is our appreciation of symmetry.
The team's research focuses on observing these behaviors directly and is based at the college.
Prof. Hall credits Arthur Xiao, the lead author on the study, with being an extremely talented and dedicated student.
More information: Y. Xiao et al, Topological superfluid defects with discrete point group symmetries, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32362-5 Journal information: Nature Communications
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