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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

Scanning SQUID Study of Vortex Manipulation by Local Contact
Published on: February 1, 2017
Chaotic behavior of three interacting vortices in a confined Bose-Einstein condensate
Nikos Kyriakopoulos1, Vassilis Koukouloyannis2, Charalampos Skokos3
1SUPA, Department of Physics and Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Motivated by recent experimental works, we investigate a system of vortex dynamics in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), consisting of three vortices, two of which have the same charge. These vortices are modeled as a system of point particles which possesses a Hamiltonian structure. This tripole system constitutes a prototypical model of vortices in BECs exhibiting chaos. By using the angular momentum integral of motion, we reduce the study of the system to the investigation of a two degree of freedom Hamiltonian model and acquire quantitative results about its chaotic behavior. Our investigation tool is the construction of scan maps by using the Smaller ALignment Index as a chaos indicator. Applying this approach to a large number of initial conditions, we manage to accurately and efficiently measure the extent of chaos in the model and its dependence on physically important parameters like the energy and the angular momentum of the system.
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