Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

One of the most remarkable properties of a superfluid is its response to rotation. The formation of an array of quantized vortex lines is a dramatic manifestation of the macroscopic quantum nature of the superfluid. But what happens if one spins the superfluid so rapidly that the vortex lines become very closely spaced? I shall describe theoretical predictions of the appearance of novel and exotic phases in cold atomic gases at high vortex densities. These include topological phases exhibiting so-called "non-abelian" exchange statistics, with the potential to support universal topological quantum computation.