  We present a quantum mechanical treatment of the mechanical stirring of
Bose-Einstein condensates using classical field techniques. In our approach the
condensate and excited modes are described using a Hamiltonian classical field
method in which the atom number and (rotating frame) energy are strictly
conserved. We simulate a T = 0 quasi-2D condensate perturbed by a rotating
anisotropic trapping potential. Vacuum fluctuations in the initial state
provide an irreducible mechanism for breaking the initial symmetries of the
condensate and seeding the subsequent dynamical instability. Highly turbulent
motion develops and we quantify the emergence of a rotating thermal component
that provides the dissipation necessary for the nucleation and motional-damping
of vortices in the condensate. Vortex lattice formation is not observed, rather
the vortices assemble into a spatially disordered vortex liquid state. We
discuss methods we have developed to identify the condensate in the presence of
an irregular distribution of vortices, determine the thermodynamic parameters
of the thermal component, and extract damping rates from the classical field
trajectories.
