Fractional vorticity, Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield systems and complex structures for the (generalized) spinor Gross-Pitaevskii equations

Abstract

The (generalized) Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) for a complex scalar field in two spatial dimensions is analyzed. It is shown that there is an infinite family of self-interaction potentials which admit Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) bounds together with the corresponding first-order BPS systems. For each member of this family, the solutions of the first-order BPS systems are automatically solutions of the corresponding second-order generalized GPE. The simplest topologically non-trivial solutions of these first-order BPS systems describe configurations with quantized fractional vorticity. The corresponding fraction is related to the degree of non-linearity. The case in which the self-interaction potential is of order six (namely |Ψ|6, which is a relevant theory both in relativistic quantum field theories in (2+1) dimensions in connection with the quantum Hall effect as well as in the theory of the supersolids) is analyzed in detail. Such formalism can also be extended to the case of quantum mixtures with multi-component GPEs. The relationship between these techniques and supersymmetry will be discussed. In particular, despite several common features, we will show that there are multi-component GPEs that are not supersymmetric (at least, not in the standard sense) and possess a BPS system of the above type.