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arXiv:1502.01881 · Physical Review A

Scattering of matter waves in spatially inhomogeneous environments

F. Tsitoura, P. Krüger, P. G. Kevrekidis, D. J. Frantzeskakis

Published Mar 30, 2015• 6 citations
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Abstract

We study scattering of quasi-one-dimensional matter waves at an interface of two spatial domains, one with repulsive and one with attractive interatomic interactions. It is shown that the incidence of a Gaussian wave packet from the repulsive to the attractive region gives rise to generation of a soliton train. More specifically, the number of emergent solitons can be controlled, e.g., by the variation of the amplitude or the width of the incoming wave packet. Furthermore, we study the reflectivity of a soliton incident from the attractive region to the repulsive one. We find the reflection coefficient numerically and employ analytical methods, which treat the soliton as a particle (for moderate and large amplitudes) or a quasilinear wave packet (for small amplitudes), to determine the critical soliton momentum (as a function of the soliton amplitude) for which total reflection is observed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.91.033633

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We study the evolution of a collisionally inhomogeneous matter wave in a spatial gradient of the interaction strength. Starting with a Bose-Einstein condensate with weak repulsive interactions in quasi-one-dimensional geometry, we monitor the evolution of a matter wave that simultaneously extends into spatial regions with attractive and repulsive interactions. We observe the formation and the decay of solitonlike density peaks, counterpropagating self-interfering wave packets, and the creation of cascades of solitons. The matter-wave dynamics is well reproduced in numerical simulations based on the nonpolynomial Schrödinger equation with three-body loss, allowing us to better understand the underlying behavior based on a wavelet transformation. Our analysis provides new understanding of collapse processes for solitons, and opens interesting connections to other nonlinear instabilities.
We experimentally study the excitation modes of bright matter-wave solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional geometry. The solitons are created by quenching the interactions of a Bose-Einstein condensate of cesium atoms from repulsive to attractive in combination with a rapid reduction of the longitudinal confinement. A deliberate mismatch of quench parameters allows for the excitation of breathing modes of the emerging soliton and for the determination of its breathing frequency as a function of atom number and confinement. In addition, we observe signatures of higher-order solitons and the splitting of the wave packet after the quench. Our experimental results are compared to analytical predictions and to numerical simulations of the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation.
We find a set of exact solutions of coherent bright solitons in the quasi-one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in a harmonic potential, by using a Gaussian laser well (barrier) with oscillating position to balance the repulsive (attractive) interatomic interaction. The bright solitons do not deform in propagation and are controlled accurately by the laser driving which resonates with the trapping potential. The solitonic motion is more stable for the repulsive BEC than that of the attractive BEC. The results reveal a different kind of soliton trains compared to that reported recently in Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 164102 (2008) and suggest an experimental scheme for generating and controlling the coherent matter-wave solitons.
Solitons are localized wave packets whose dispersion is compensated by a nonlinearity. Solitons are observed in many wave settings including optics, fluids, plasmas, and matter-waves. Bright matter-wave solitons were first created by quenching the interactions in a quasi-one dimensional atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) from repulsive to attractive. Under some conditions a train of up to 10 solitons was formed. Neighboring solitons were observed to repel one another, an effect that was attributed to an alternating π-0-π phase distribution. There has been a theoretical debate whether this phase structure is inherent to the formation of the train, or if it evolves through a series of mergers and annihilations between neighboring solitons that are in-phase, and hence attractive. This paper shows that the interaction quench initiates a modulation instability (MI) in which weak perturbations undergo a nonlinear amplification, resulting in their exponential growth. Results show that the number of solitons is consistent with the initial size of the condensate divided by 2πξ. Furthermore, once formed, there are few solitons lost to merger or annihilation collisions. From this, we conclude that the soliton train is created with an alternating phase structure, rather than evolving into one.
We report on investigations of the properties of bright solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates in the presence of point-like spatial inhomogeneities, in one and two dimensions. By considering an analytical variational approach and full numerical simulations, we describe such processes due to interactions between the soliton and the inhomogeneity as the trapping, reflection, and transmission of bright matter solitons. We also study the critical number of particles as a function of the magnitude of the impurity.
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