Route to non-Abelian quantum turbulence in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We have studied computationally the collision dynamics of spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates initially confined in a triple-well trap. Depending on the phase structure of the initial-state spinor wave function, the collision of the three condensate fragments produces one of many possible vortex-antivortex lattices, after which the system transitions to quantum turbulence. We find that the emerging vortex lattice structures can be described in terms of multiwave interference. We show that the three-fragment collisions can be used to systematically produce staggered vortex-antivortex honeycomb lattices of fractional-charge vortices, whose collision dynamics are known to be non-Abelian. Such condensate collider experiments could potentially be used as a controllable pathway to generating non-Abelian superfluid turbulence with networks of vortex rungs.