Quantum Turbulence in Atomic Bose-Einsten Condensates

Turbulence is a young field of research which is characterized by chaotic spinning flow regimes which appear in many important processes in nature. Vorticity, in superfluid systems, may present the simplest form of turbulence, and be a gateway to the study of this phenomenon in quantum gases. An 87Rb Bose condensate was used to observe and investigate the emergence of quantum turbulence, a few years back in our group. The vortices are created on the condensed-thermal interface and propagate across the cloud, setting up the experimental conditions favourable to the emergence of turbulence. Once the turbulent regime is set, the condensate is released and expands under free fall. Then, the atomic density profile is acquired, after some time-of-flight, and used to determine the in situ momentum distribution of the BEC. The scope of this study was limited to the homogeneous turbulent cloud which ended up with some approximated results.