  The occurrence of vortices in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) enables
a description of their superfluid behaviour. In this article we present a
pedagogical introduction to the vortex physics in trapped atomic BECs. The
mechanism of the vortex nucleation in an atomic BEC is discussed in detail. We
also discuss a recently proposed approach which treats the problem of vortex
nucleation using a one-particle Schr$\ddot{o}$dinger equation with non-local
and chiral boundary conditions.
