Phase diagram of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in power-law and hard-wall potentials
Phys. Rev. A 114, 013308 – Published 7 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yf28-wlqr
Abstract
We investigate the rotational phase diagram of a quasi-two-dimensional, weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate confined in power-law and hard-wall trapping potentials. For weak interactions, the system undergoes discontinuous transitions between multiply quantized vortex states as the rotation frequency of the trap increases. In contrast, stronger interactions induce continuous phase transitions toward mixed states involving both singly and multiply quantized vortex states. A central result is the qualitative (and experimentally observable) difference between power-law and hard-wall confinement: In hard-wall traps the leading instability always involves states with nonzero density at the trap center, whereas in power-law traps the density vanishes as the rotation frequency increases. The two different types of confinement give rise to scaling properties in the derived phase diagrams.
