Hydrodynamic signatures and spectral properties of the quantum vortex

Abstract

We characterize the low-lying excitations of a quantum vortex in a quasi-two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) using the standard definition of the density of states (DOS) and a modified version that is sensitive to complementary aspects of the excitation's spectrum. The latter proves to be particularly relevant to studying the polaronic state realized when an impurity is embedded in a quantum vortex. We establish that the impurity becomes sensitive to the transversal fluctuations of the vortex, via its remnant kelvon mode, and to the phase fluctuations of the BEC Nambu-Goldstone mode. The presence of the vortex yields an anomalous excitation spectrum with a finite energy gap and non-linear DOS at low energies. We find that the high sensitivity of the kelvon mode to external potentials provides a channel of quantum-level control over impurities trapped in a vortex. This extra control channel may be of practical use for the proposal of using vortex-trapped impurities as qubit units for quantum information processing.