Optical control of vortex lattices and magnetostriction in a confined quantum ferrofluid.

The ability to engineer topological states of matter with light is a central goal of quantum optics. We demonstrate that the anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction (DDI), tunable via optical Feshbach resonances, provides a powerful optical knob for controlling quantized vortices in quantum ferrofluids. We show that DDI-induced magnetostriction, which elongates the atomic cloud, acts as an effective optical lensing effect that reduces the transverse condensate size. This dramatically lowers the critical rotation frequency for vortex nucleation, enabling the formation of vortex lattices at interaction strengths previously inaccessible due to collapse. Our work establishes a general all-optical framework for sculpting topological excitations in magnetic atoms, with implications for quantum simulation and the study of anisotropic quantum turbulence.