Dynamics of a solitonic vortex in an anisotropically trapped superfluid

Abstract

We analytically study the dynamics of a solitonic vortex (SV) in a superfluid confined in a non-axisymmetric harmonic trap. The study provides a framework for analyzing the role of the trap anisotropy in the oscillation of SVs observed in recent experiments on atomic Bose and Fermi superfluids. The emergence of common and statistics-dependent features is traced in a unified approach to both types of fluid. Our description, built in the hydrodynamic formalism, is based on a Lagragian approach which incorporates the vortex location as dynamical parameters of a variational ansatz. Previous operative Hamiltonian pictures are recovered through a canonically traced procedure. Our results improve the understanding of the experimental findings. Some of the observed features are shown to be specific to the tri-axial anisotropy of the trap. In particular, we characterize the nontrivial dependence of the oscillation frequency on the trapping transversal to the vortical line. The study reveals also the crucial role played by the nonlinear character of the dynamics in the observed oscillation: for the considered experimental conditions, the frequency, and, in turn, the effective inertial mass of the vortex, are found to significantly depend on the amplitude of the generated motion. It is also uncovered how the coupling with collective modes of the fluid induces a non-negligible shift in the oscillation frequency. The appearance of fine-structure features in the SV trajectory is predicted.