No Arabic abstract
We study the stability, form and interaction of single and multiple dark solitons in quasi-one-dimensional dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates. The solitons are found numerically as stationary solutions in the moving frame of a non-local Gross Pitaevskii equation, and characterized as a function of the key experimental parameters, namely the ratio of the dipolar atomic interactions to the van der Waals interactions, the polarization angle and the condensate width. The solutions and their integrals of motion are strongly affected by the phonon and roton instabilities of the system. Dipolar matter-wave dark solitons propagate without dispersion, and collide elastically away from these instabilities, with the dipolar interactions contributing an additional repulsion or attraction to the soliton-soliton interaction. However, close to the instabilities, the collisions are weakly dissipative.
We present a comprehensive analysis of the form and interaction of dipolar bright solitons across the full parameter space afforded by dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing the rich behaviour introduced by the non-local nonlinearity. Working within an effective one-dimensional description, we map out the existence of the soliton solutions and show three collisional regimes: free collisions, bound state formation and soliton fusion. Finally, we examine the solitons in their full three-dimensional form through a variational approach; along with regimes of instability to collapse and runaway expansion, we identify regimes of stability which are accessible to current experiments.
Motivated by the experimental development of quasi-homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates confined in box-like traps, we study numerically the dynamics of dark solitons in such traps at zero temperature. We consider the cases where the side walls of the box potential rise either as a power-law or a Gaussian. While the soliton propagates through the homogeneous interior of the box without dissipation, it typically dissipates energy during a reflection from a wall through the emission of sound waves, causing a slight increase in the solitons speed. We characterise this energy loss as a function of the wall parameters. Moreover, over multiple oscillations and reflections in the box-like trap, the energy loss and speed increase of the soliton can be significant, although the decay eventually becomes stabilized when the soliton equilibrates with the ambient sound field.
We consider the linear stability of chiral matter-wave solitons described by a density-dependent gauge theory. By studying the associated Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations both numerically and analytically, we find that the stability problem effectively reduces to that of the standard Gross-Pitaevskii equation, proving that the solitons are stable to linear perturbations. In addition, we formulate the stability problem in the framework of the Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion and provide supplementary numerical simulations which illustrate the absence of instabilities when the soliton is initially perturbed.
Thanks to their immense purity and controllability, dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates are an exemplar for studying fundamental non-local nonlinear physics. Here we show that a family of fundamental nonlinear waves - the dark solitons - are supported in trapped quasi-one-dimensional dipolar condensates and within reach of current experiments. Remarkably, the oscillation frequency of the soliton is strongly dependent on the atomic interactions, in stark contrast to the non-dipolar case. The failure of a particle analogy, so successful for dark solitons in general, to account for this behaviour implies that these structures are inherently extended and non-particle-like. These highly-sensitive waves may act as mesoscopic probes of the underlying quantum matter field.
We study interactions between bright matter-wave solitons which acquire chiral transport dynamics due to an optically-induced density-dependent gauge potential. Through numerical simulations, we find that the collision dynamics feature several non-integrable phenomena, from inelastic collisions including population transfer and radiation losses to short-lived bound states and soliton fission. An effective quasi-particle model for the interaction between the solitons is derived by means of a variational approximation, which demonstrates that the inelastic nature of the collision arises from a coupling of the gauge field to velocities of the solitons. In addition, we derive a set of interaction potentials which show that the influence of the gauge field appears as a short-range potential, that can give rise to both attractive and repulsive interactions.