Nature Communications (Jul 2016)

Vortex knots in tangled quantum eigenfunctions

  • Alexander J. Taylor,
  • Mark R. Dennis

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12346
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 6

Abstract

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Strings or long chains are prone to knotting. Here, the authors demonstrate that the vortex structure of quantum wavefunctions, such as that in a simple harmonic oscillator, can also contain knots, whose topological complexity can be a descriptor of the spatial order of the system.