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Splitting dynamics of giant vortices in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the splitting of multiply quantized vortices with large quantum numbers in dilute nonrotated Bose-Einstein condensates in the zero-temperature limit. The splitting is observed to result in vortex-free condensate fragments which are separated by vortex sheets. The number of these fragments is found to be equal to the angular-momentum quantum number of the Bogoliubov excitation mode responsible for the splitting, although the formulation of the fragments cannot be described by small-amplitude excitations. Thus, the realization of an isolated giant vortex and the observation of its splitting would provide a means to directly relate the experimental data to discrete theoretical quantities.