Roton excitations in a trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract: We consider the quasi-particle excitations of a trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. By mapping these excitations onto radial and angular momentum we show that the roton modes are clearly revealed as discrete fingers in parameter space, whereas the other modes form a smooth surface. We examine the properties of the roton modes and characterize how they change with the dipole interaction strength. We demonstrate how the application of a perturbing potential can be used to engineer angular rotons, i.e. allowing us to controllably select modes of non-zero angular momentum to become the lowest energy rotons.