Vortex lattice of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a rotating anisotropic trap -: art. no. 023618

We study the vortex lattices in a Bose-Einstein condensate in a rotating anisotropic harmonic trap. We first investigate the single-particle wave functions obtained by the exact solution of the problem and give simple expressions for these wave functions in the small anisotropy limit. Depending on the strength of the interactions, a few or a large number of vortices can be formed. In the limit of many vortices, we calculate the density profile of the cloud and show that the vortex lattice stays triangular. We also find that the vortex lattice planes align themselves with the weak axis of the external potential. For a small number of vortices, we numerically solve the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and find vortex configurations that are very different from the vortex configurations in an axisymmetric rotating trap.