Solitons and vortices in an evolving Bose-Einstein condensate

Spatiotemporal evolution of a confined Bose-Einstein condensate is studied by numerically integrating the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Self-interference between the successively expanding and reflecting nonlinear matter waves results in spiral atomic density profile, which subsequently degenerates into an embedding structure: The inner part preserves memory of the initial states while the outer part forms a sequence of necklacelike rings. The phase plot reveals a series of discrete concentric belts. The large gradients between adjacent belts indicate that the ring density notches are dark solitons. In the dynamical process, a scenario of vortex-antivortex pairs are spontaneously created and annihilated, whereas the total vorticity keeps invariant.