Observation of Breathers in an Attractive Bose Gas
P. J. Everitt, M. A. Sooriyabandara, Gordon McDonald, Kyle S. Hardman, Ciaron Quinlivan, Manju Perumbil, P. B. Wigley, J. E. Debs, J. D. Close, C. C. N. Kuhn, Nicholas P. Robins
In weakly nonlinear dispersive systems, solitons are spatially localized solutions which propagate without changing shape through a delicate balance between dispersion and self-focusing nonlinear effects. These states have been extensively studied in Bose-Einstein condensates, where interatomic interactions give rise to such nonlinearities. Previous experimental work with matter wave solitons has been limited to static intensity profiles. The creation of matter wave breathers--dispersionless soliton-like states with collective oscillation frequencies driven by attractive mean-field interactions--have been of theoretical interest due to the exotic behaviour of interacting matter wave systems. Here, using an attractively interacting Bose-Einstein condensate, we present the first observation of matter wave breathers. A comparison between experimental data and a cubic-quintic Gross-Pitaevskii equation suggests that previously unobserved three-body interactions may play an important role in this system. The observation of long lived stable breathers in an attractively interacting matter wave system indicates that there is a wide range of previously unobserved, but theoretically predicted, effects that are now experimentally accessible.
In weakly nonlinear dispersive systems, solitons are spatially localized solutions which propagate without changing shape through a delicate balance between dispersion and self-focusing nonlinear effects. These states have been extensively studied in Bose-Einstein condensates, where interatomic interactions give rise to such nonlinearities. Previous experimental work with matter wave solitons has been limited to static intensity profiles. The creation of matter wave breathers--dispersionless soliton-like states with collective oscillation frequencies driven by attractive mean-field interactions--have been of theoretical interest due to the exotic behaviour of interacting matter wave systems. Here, using an attractively interacting Bose-Einstein condensate, we present the first observation of matter wave breathers. A comparison between experimental data and a cubic-quintic Gross-Pitaevskii equation suggests that previously unobserved three-body interactions may play an important role in this system. The observation of long lived stable breathers in an attractively interacting matter wave system indicates that there is a wide range of previously unobserved, but theoretically predicted, effects that are now experimentally accessible.
Solitons are non-dispersive wave packets that balance the wave dispersion with a focusing nonlinearity. They maintain their shape and velocity after collisions with other solitons, owing to the integrability of the underlying nonlinear partial differential equations. They appear in various physical systems, such as water waves, light waves in optical fiber, and matter waves. In our laboratory, we study solitons and their interactions in a Bose-Einstein condensate with an attractive nonlinearity, trapped in a quasi-one-dimensional waveguide. We investigate the collisions of a pair of solitons and explore the relative phase implications on the boundary of integrability. We study soliton train formation with the quench of the nonlinearity strength, and interactions between neighboring solitons in the train. We form a composite soliton, known as a breather, where multiple solitons overlap and the wavefunction ``breathes'' in time. We also explore the response of an elongated condensate to an external modulation of the nonlinearity. These experiments characterize the mean-field descriptions of solitons and Bose-Einstein condensates and explore the boundaries between the mean-field theory and quantum many-body theory.
Static and dynamic properties of matter-wave solitons in dense Bose-Einstein condensates, where three-body interactions play a significant role, have been studied by a variational approximation (VA) and numerical simulations. For experimentally relevant parameters, matter-wave solitons may acquire a flat-top shape, which suggests employing a superGaussian trial function for VA. Comparison of the soliton profiles, predicted by VA and those found from numerical solution of the governing Gross-Pitaevskii equation shows good agreement, thereby validating the proposed approach.
We report the creation of quasi-1D excited matter-wave solitons, "breathers," by quenching the strength of the interactions in a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interactions. We characterize the resulting breathing dynamics and quantify the effects of the aspect ratio of the confining potential, the strength of the quench, and the proximity of the 1D-3D crossover for the two-soliton breather. Furthermore, we demonstrate the complex dynamics of a three-soliton breather created by a stronger interaction quench. Our experimental results, which compare well with numerical simulations, provide a pathway for utilizing matter-wave breathers to explore quantum effects in large many-body systems.
A one-dimensional (1D) Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation which governs the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with time-dependent scattering length in a harmonic potential is considered. Through a modified phase imprint transformation into the macroscopic order parameter, we suitably generate a derivative cubic-quintic Gross-Pitaevskii (DCQ-GP) equation that describes the dynamics of condensates in the harmonic potential for both twoand three-body interatomic interactions in the presence of nonlinear dispersion. Employing a modified lens-type transformation, we reduce the DCQ-GP equation into a derivative cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau (DCQ-GL) equation that allows us to investigate the modulational instability (MI) of the system and study, through the analytical exact solutions of the considered 1D GP equation, the effects of the three-body interactions and nonlinear dispersion on the dynamics of the BECs. We observe that for BECs with repulsive two-body interatomic interactions, the attractive three-body interactions and the nonlinear dispersion have opposite effects on the condensate: (i) The attractive three-body interactions enhance the instability, while the nonlinear dispersion softens the instability of the system; (ii) the attractive three-body interactions contributes to the ejections of atoms from the condensates while the nonlinear dispersion contributes to the accumulation of atoms in the condensates; (iii) the attractive three-body interactions contributes to the broadening of the matter wave solitons, while the nonlinear dispersion contributes to the compression of the matter wave solitons.
Bose–Einstein Condensation (BEC) of atomic gases has attracted a renewed theoretical and experimental interest in quantum many-body systems at extremely low temperatures (Pethick & Smith; 2002). This excitement stems from two favorable features: (1) by applying magnetic fields and lasers, most of the system parameters, such as the shape, dimensionality, internal states of the condensates, and even the strength of the interatomic interactions, are controllable; (2) due to the diluteness, the mean-field theory explains experiments quite well. In particular, the Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) equation demonstrates its validity as a basic equation for the condensate dynamics. The GP equation is the counterpart of the nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation in nonlinear optics. Thus, a study based on nonlinear analysis is possible and important. In nonlinear physics, a soliton is remarkable object not only for the fact that exact solutions can be obtained but also for its usefulness as a communications tool due to its robustness. In general, solitons are formed under the balance between nonlinearity and dispersion. For atomic condensates, the former is attributed to the interatomic interactions, while the latter comes from the kinetic energy. Either dark or bright solitons are allowable depending on the positive or negative sign of the interatomic coupling constants g, respectively, and indeed have been observed in a quasione-dimensional (q1D) optically constructed waveguide (Strecker et al.; 2002) (Khaykovich et al.; 2002). Such matter-wave solitons are expected in atom optics for applications in atom laser, atom interferometry, and coherent atom transport (Meystre; 2002). In this chapter, we extend the analysis of the matter-wave solitons to a multicomponent case by considering the so-called spinor condensate (Stenger et al.; 1998) whose spin degrees of freedom are liberated under optical traps. Based on theoretical and experimental results, we introduce a new integrable model which describes the dynamical properties of the matter-wave soliton of spinor condensates (Ieda et al.; 2004a). We employ the inverse scattering method to solve this model exactly. As a result, we predict the occurrence of undiscovered physical phenomena such as macroscopic spin precession and spin switching. The chapter is organized as follows. In Sec. 2, the mean field theory of condensate is briefly reviewed. Section 3 introduces an effective interatomic coupling in a q1D condensate. Using these results, we consider a spinor condensate in q1D regime in Sec. 4. Then, in Sec. 5, we
We investigate the profiles and stability of the localized nonlinear matter waves in a Bose–Einstein condensate with spatially inhomogeneous two- and three-body interactions in various external potentials both analytically and numerically. Several families of localized stationary solutions of the one-dimensional mean-field Gross–Pitaevskii equation with cubic–quintic nonlinearities are obtained by similarity transformation. It is shown that the whole Bose–Einstein condensate can have an infinite number of localized nonlinear matter waves determined by certain non-negative integers. The linear and dynamical stabilities of the localized stationary solutions are studied numerically, and some stable localized nonlinear matter waves are found. We demonstrate that the attractive inhomogeneous two- and three-body interactions support linearly and dynamically stable localized nonlinear matter waves, but attractive two-body interaction along with repulsive three-body interaction destroys the linear stability. Moreover, an anharmonic potential is proposed to stabilize the localized nonlinear matter waves in the Bose–Einstein condensate with spatially inhomogeneous interactions.