Instability of Rotationally Tuned Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensates.

The possibility of effectively inverting the sign of the dipole-dipole interaction, by fast rotation of the dipole polarization, is examined within a harmonically trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. Our analysis is based on the stationary states in the Thomas-Fermi limit, in the corotating frame, as well as direct numerical simulations in the Thomas-Fermi regime, explicitly accounting for the rotating polarization. The condensate is found to be inherently unstable due to the dynamical instability of collective modes. This ultimately prevents the realization of robust and long-lived rotationally tuned states. Our findings have major implications for experimentally accessing this regime.

Anisotropic and long-range vortex interactions in two-dimensional dipolar Bose gases.

We perform a theoretical study into how dipole-dipole interactions modify the properties of superfluid vortices within the context of a two-dimensional atomic Bose gas of co-oriented dipoles. The reduced density at a vortex acts like a giant antidipole, changing the density profile and generating an effective dipolar potential centred at the vortex core whose most slowly decaying terms go as 1/ρ(2) and ln(ρ)/ρ(3). These effects modify the vortex-vortex interaction which, in particular, becomes anisotropic for dipoles polarized in the plane. Striking modifications to vortex-vortex dynamics are demonstrated, i.e., anisotropic corotation dynamics and the suppression of vortex annihilation.