Paper detail

Acoustic Superradiance from a Bose-Einstein Condensate Vortex with a Self-Consistent Background Density Profile

The axisymmetric acoustic perturbations in the velocity potential of a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a single vortex behave like minimally coupled massless scalar fields propagating in a curved (1+1) dimensional Lorentzian space-time, governed by the Klein-Gordon wave equation. Thus far, the amplified scattering of these perturbations from the vortex, as a manifestation of the acoustic superradiance, has been investigated with a constant background density. This paper goes beyond by employing a self-consistent condensate density profile that is obtained by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for an unbound BEC. Consequently, the loci of the event horizon and the ergosphere of the acoustic black hole are modified according to the radially varying speed of sound. The superradiance is investigated both for transient features in the time-domain and for spectral features in the frequency domain. In particular, an effective energy-potential function defined in the spectral formulation correlates with the existence and the frequency dependence of the acoustic superradiance. The numerical results indicate that the constant background density approximation underestimates the maximum superradiance and the frequency at which this maximum occurs.