Solitary Matter Waves in Combined Linear and Nonlinear Potentials: Detection, Stability, and Dynamics
arXiv:1301.1715 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.88.033627
Abstract
We study statically homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates with spatially inhomogeneous interactions and outline an experimental realization of compensating linear and nonlinear potentials that can yield constant-density solutions. We illustrate how the presence of a step in the nonlinearity coefficient can only be revealed dynamically and consider, in particular, how to reveal it by exploiting the inhomogeneity of the sound speed with a defect-dragging experiment. We conduct computational experiments and observe the spontaneous emergence of dark solitary waves. We use effective-potential theory to perform a detailed analytical investigation of the existence and stability of solitary waves in this setting, and we corroborate these results computationally using a Bogoliubov-de Gennes linear stability analysis. We find that dark solitary waves are unstable for all step widths, whereas bright solitary waves can become stable through a symmetry-breaking bifurcation as one varies the step width. Using phase-plane analysis, we illustrate the scenarios that permit this bifurcation and explore the dynamical outcomes of the interaction between the solitary wave and the step.
7 pages (published version), 4 figures
References in corpus (16)
- Collective excitations of a degenerate gas at the BEC-BCS crossover
- Oscillations and interactions of dark and dark-bright solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates
- Tuning the scattering length with an optically induced Feshbach resonance
- Formation of bright matter-wave solitons during the collapse of Bose-Einstein condensates
- On Dispersive and Classical Shock Waves in Bose-Einstein Condensates and Gas Dynamics
- Experimental observation of oscillating and interacting matter wave dark solitons
- Solitary Wave Dynamics in an External Potential
- Effective mean-field equations for cigar-shaped and disk-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates
- Fully three dimensional breather solitons can be created using Feshbach resonance
- Gap solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates in linear and nonlinear optical lattices
- Matter-wave solitons with a periodic, piecewise-constant nonlinearity
- Soliton oscillations in collisionally inhomogeneous attractive Bose-Einstein condensates
- Dark solitons in external potentials
- Delocalizing transition in one-dimensional condensates in optical lattices due to inhomogeneous interactions
- Condensation and quasicondensation in an elongated three-dimensional Bose gas
- Dark Solitary Waves in a Class of Collisionally Inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein Condensates