The Gross-Pitaevskii-Poisson model for an ultracold plasma: density waves and solitons

Abstract

We introduce 1D and 2D models of a degenerate bosonic gas composed of ions with positive and negative charges (cations and anions). The system may exist in the mean-field condensate state, enabling the competition of the Coulomb coupling, contact repulsion, and kinetic energy of the particles, provided that their effective mass is reduced by means of a lattice potential. The model combines the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equations for the two-component wave function of the cations and anions, coupled to the Poisson equation for the electrostatic potential mediating the Coulomb coupling. The contact interaction in the GP system can be derived, in the Thomas-Fermi approximation, from a system of three GP equations, which includes the wave function of heavy neutral atoms. In the system with fully repulsive contact interactions, we construct stable spatially periodic patterns (density waves, DWs). The transition to DWs is identified by analysis of the modulational instability of a uniformly mixed neutral state. The DW pattern, which represents the system's ground state (GS), is predicted by a variational approximation. In 2D, a stable pattern is produced too, with a quasi-1D shape. The 1D system with contact self-attraction in each component produces bright solitons of three types: neutral ones, with fully mixed components; dipoles, with the components separated by the inter-species contact repulsion; and quadrupoles, with a layer of one component sandwiched between side lobes formed by the other. The transition from the neutral solitons to dipoles is accurately modeled analytically. A chart of the GSs of the different types (neutral solitons, dipoles, or quadrupoles) is produced. Different soliton species do not coexist as stable states. Collisions between traveling solitons are elastic for dipole-dipole pairs, while dipole-antidipole ones merge into stable quadrupoles via multiple collisions.

arXiv commentto be published in Physical Review Research

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