Motivated by a recent experiment [K. C. Wright et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 025302 (2013)], we investigate deterministic discontinuous jumps between quantized circulation states in a toroidally trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. These phase slips are induced by vortex excitations created by a rotating weak link. We analyze the influence of a localized condensate density depletion and atomic superflows, governed by the rotating barrier, on the energetic and dynamical stability of the vortices in the ring-shaped condensate. We simulate in a three-dimensional dissipative mean-field model the dynamics of the condensate using parameters similar to the experimental conditions. Moreover, we consider the dynamics of the stirred condensate far beyond the experimentally explored region and reveal surprising manifestations of complex vortex dynamics.

Motivated by recent experiments we study the influence of thermal noise on the phase slips in toroidal Bose-Einstein condensates with a rotating weak link. We derive a generalized Arrheniuslike expression for the rate of stochastic phase slips. We develop a method to estimate the energy barrier separating different superflow states. The parameters at which the energy barrier disappears agree with the critical parameters for deterministic phase slips obtained from dynamics simulations, which confirms the validity of our energetic analysis. We reveal that adding thermal noise lowers the phase-slip threshold. However, the quantitative impact of the stochastic phase slips turns out to be too small to explain the significant discrepancy between theoretical and the experimental results.

The nature of dark matter (DM) is one of the most fascinating unresolved challenges of modern physics. One of the perspective hypotheses suggests that DM consists of ultralight bosonic particles in the state of Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). The superfluid nature of BEC must dramatically affect the properties of DM including quantization of the angular momentum. Angular momentum quantum in the form of a vortex line is expected to produce a considerable impact on the luminous matter in galaxies including density distribution and rotation curves. We investigate the evolution of spinning DM cloud with typical galactic halo mass and radius. Analytically and numerically stationary vortex soliton states with different topological charges have been analyzed. It has been shown that while all multi-charged vortex states are unstable, a single-charged vortex soliton is extremely robust and survives during the lifetime of the Universe.

We investigate spatiotemporal vortex rings with phase dislocation both in space and time. It is demonstrated that these structures naturally appear as a periodical in time edge phase dislocation at the low-density region of a perturbed atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The condition of formation, dynamics and stability of the spatiotemporal vortex rings are investigated for repulsive and attractive interatomic interactions. These theoretical findings open up a perspective for experimental observation of novel type of topological coherent structures in ultracold gases.