In a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate, subject to the action of an alternating external field, coherent topological modes can be resonantly excited. Depending on the amplitude of the external field and detuning parameter, there are two principally different regimes of motion, with mode locking and without it. The change of the dynamic regime corresponds to a dynamic phase transition. This transition can be characterized by an effective order parameter defined as the difference between fractional mode populations averaged over the temporal period of oscillations. The behavior of this order parameter, as a function of detuning, pumping amplitude, and atomic interactions is carefully analyzed. Special attention is paid to numerical calculations for the realistic case of a quadrupole exciting field and the system parameters accessible in current experiments.

• Received 29 May 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.76.033608