Pu H, Baksmaty L O, Yi S, Bigelow N P
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77251-1892, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2005 May 20;94(19):190401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.190401. Epub 2005 May 16.
We consider the vortex structure of a rapidly rotating trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a corotating periodic optical lattice potential. We observe a rich variety of structural phases which reflect the interplay of the vortex-vortex and vortex-lattice interactions. The lattice structure is very sensitive to the ratio of vortices to pinning sites and we observe structural phase transitions and domain formation as this ratio is varied.