Analytical stability results for vortices in 2D Bose-Einstein condensates

Full text: We present a rigorous investigation of the stability of vortices in trapped, rotating two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates in the Gross-Pitaevskii description. The stability properties depend on the fundamental parameters rotation velocity and coupling constant (which measures the interaction strength between the particles). We present our results for condensates confined in homogeneous and more general external potentials in the limit of a very large coupling constant (the so-called Thomas-Fermi regime). Previous results on the nucleation of one vortex and n vortices (n>1) which were obtained in the context of the Ginzburg-Landau energy functional with magnetic field were extended to our case of the rotating Bose-Einstein condensate. (author)