Universal Fold Caustics in Anharmonic Matter-wave Lenses

Abstract

Caustics provide a universal connection between classical ray focusing and structured wave patterns. We theoretically investigate this connection in non-linear matter waves focused by a short-duration anharmonic lens acting on a Bose-Einstein condensate. A semi-classical description shows how the leading cubic aberration transforms the harmonic focal point into a fold caustic, whose local wave field is described by an Airy canonical integral. Three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii simulations show that mean-field interactions modify the near-focus density and longitudinal momentum distribution, producing a secondary momentum-space feature absent from the non-interacting evolution. We quantify the information about the effective interaction strength carried by the $1D$ distribution using classical Fisher information and maximum-likelihood estimation. We obtain a relative uncertainty of $2.7\times 10^{-3}$ for a sample of $10^5$ detected points along $z$. These results establish a framework for studying interaction-driven departures from single-particle caustic universality and promote matter-wave lenses as a sensitive probe of mean-field interactions.