Emergence of spiral dark solitons in the merging of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract: Merging of isolated Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) is an important topic due to its relevance to matter-wave interferometry and the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Many past research focused on merging of BECs with uniform initial phases. In our recent numerical study (Phys. Rev. A 97, 013612 (2018)), we revealed that upon merging of rotating BECs with non-uniform initial phases, spiral-shaped dark solitons can emerge. These solitons facilitate angular momentum transfer and allow the merged condensate to rotate even in the absence of quantized vortices. More strikingly, the sharp endpoints of these spiral solitons can induce rotational motion in the BECs like vortices but with effectively a fraction of a quantized circulation. This paper reports our systematic study on the merging dynamics of rotating BECs. We discuss how the potential barrier that initially separates the BECs can affect the profile of the spiral solitons. We also show that the number of spiral solitons created in the BECs matches the relative winding number of the rotating BECs. The underlying mechanism of the observed soliton dynamics is explained.