The Peripheral Vortex Biome of Confined Quantum Fluids and Its Influence on Vortex Pair Annihilation

The self-annihilation of oppositely charged optical vortices in a quantum fluid is hindered by nonlinearity and promoted by radial confinement, resulting in rich life-cycle dynamics of such pairs. The competing effects generate a biome of peripheral vortices that can directly interact with the original pair to produce a sequence of surrogation events. Numerical simulation is used to elucidate the role of the vortex biome as a function of nonlinearity strength and the initial spacing between the engineered vortices. The results apply directly to other nonlinear quantum fluids as well and may be useful in the control of complex condensates in which vortex dynamics produce topologically protected phases.