Vortex core structure and global properties of rapidly rotating Bose-Einstein condensates

We develop an approach for calculating stationary states of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates in harmonic traps which is applicable for arbitrary ratios of the rotation frequency to the transverse frequency of the trap omega(perpendicular to). Assuming the number of vortices to be large, we write the condensate wave function as the product of a function that describes the structure of individual vortices times an envelope function varying slowly on the scale of the vortex spacing. By minimizing the energy, we derive Gross-Pitaevskii equations that determine the properties of individual vortices and the global structure of the cloud. For low rotation rates, the structure of a vortex is that of an isolated vortex in a uniform medium, while for rotation rates approaching the frequency of the trap (the mean-field lowest-Landau-level regime), the structure is that of the lowest p-wave state of a particle in a harmonic trap with frequency omega(perpendicular to). The global structure of the cloud is determined by minimizing the energy with respect to variations of the envelope function; for conditions appropriate to most experimental investigations to date, we predict that the transverse density profile of the cloud will be of the Thomas-Fermi form, rather than the Gaussian structure predicted on the assumption that the wave function consists only of components in the lowest Landau level for a regular array of vortices.