Creation of a vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate by superradiant scattering

Abstract

The creation of a topological vortex by a superradiant scattering of a Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam off an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is theoretically investigated. It is shown that scattered superradiant radiation can be either in a Gaussian mode without angular momentum or in a LG mode with angular momentum. The conditions leading to these two qualitatively distinct regimes of superradiance are determined in terms of the width for the pump laser and the condensate size for the limiting cases where the recoil energy is both much smaller and larger than the atomic interaction energy.