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arXiv:1608.03916 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Brownian motion of solitons in a Bose–Einstein condensate

Lauren Aycock, Hilary M. Hurst, Dmitry K. Efimkin, Dina Genkina, Hsin-I Lu, Victor M. Galitski, Ian B. Spielman

Published Feb 14, 2017• 56 citations
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Abstract

We observed and controlled the Brownian motion of solitons. We launched solitonic excitations in highly elongated [Formula: see text] Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and showed that a dilute background of impurity atoms in a different internal state dramatically affects the soliton. With no impurities and in one dimension (1D), these solitons would have an infinite lifetime, a consequence of integrability. In our experiment, the added impurities scatter off the much larger soliton, contributing to its Brownian motion and decreasing its lifetime. We describe the soliton's diffusive behavior using a quasi-1D scattering theory of impurity atoms interacting with a soliton, giving diffusion coefficients consistent with experiment.

DOI
10.1073/pnas.1615004114

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We observed and controlled the Brownian motion of solitons. We launched solitonic excitations in highly elongated [Formula: see text] Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and showed that a dilute background of impurity atoms in a different internal state dramatically affects the soliton. With no impurities and in one dimension (1D), these solitons would have an infinite lifetime, a consequence of integrability. In our experiment, the added impurities scatter off the much larger soliton, contributing to its Brownian motion and decreasing its lifetime. We describe the soliton's diffusive behavior using a quasi-1D scattering theory of impurity atoms interacting with a soliton, giving diffusion coefficients consistent with experiment.
Solitons, spatially-localized, mobile excitations resulting from an interplay between nonlinearity and dispersion, are ubiquitous in physical systems from water channels and oceans to optical fibers and Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). For the first time, we observed and controlled the Brownian motion of solitons. We launched long-lived dark solitons in highly elongated 87Rb^{87}\rm{Rb}87Rb BECs and showed that a dilute background of impurity atoms in a different internal state dramatically affects the soliton. With no impurities and in one-dimension (1-D), these solitons would have an infinite lifetime, a consequence of integrability. In our experiment, the added impurities scatter off the much larger soliton, contributing to its Brownian motion and decreasing its lifetime. We describe the soliton's diffusive behavior using a quasi-1-D scattering theory of impurity atoms interacting with a soliton, giving diffusion coefficients consistent with experiment.
We study controllable friction in a system consisting of a dark soliton in a one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to a noninteracting Fermi gas. The fermions act as impurity atoms, not part of the original condensate, that scatter off of the soliton. We study semiclassical dynamics of the dark soliton, a particlelike object with negative mass, and calculate its friction coefficient. Surprisingly, it depends periodically on the ratio of interspecies (impurity-condensate) to intraspecies (condensate-condensate) interaction strengths. By tuning this ratio, one can access a regime where the friction coefficient vanishes. We develop a general theory of stochastic dynamics for negative-mass objects and find that their dynamics are drastically different from their positive-mass counterparts: they do not undergo Brownian motion. From the exact phase-space probability distribution function (i.e., in position and velocity), we find that both the trajectory and lifetime of the soliton are altered by friction, and the soliton can undergo Brownian motion only in the presence of friction and a confining potential. These results agree qualitatively with experimental observations by Aycock et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 114, 2503 (2017)] in a similar system with bosonic impurity scatterers.
Scattering of a discrete soliton by a single impurity in dipolar Bose–Einstein condensate is investigated numerically. The results show that the increase of the strength of dipolar interactions leads to repeated reflection, transmission and trapping regions due to energy exchange between the center of mass motion and the internal modes of the impurity. However, increasing the strength of the attractive nonlocal dipole–dipole interaction will result in different scattering windows. While the dipole–dipole interaction can significantly expand the trapping region of the system, nevertheless transmission resonances through the impurity are still observed.
We present two families of analytical solutions of the one-dimensional nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, which describe the dynamics of bright and dark solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with the time-dependent interatomic interaction in an expulsive parabolic and complex potential. We also demonstrate that the lifetime of both a bright soliton and a dark soliton in BECs can be extended by reducing both the ratio of the axial oscillation frequency to radial oscillation frequency and the loss of atoms. It is interesting that a train of bright solitons may be excited with a strong enough background. An experimental protocol is further designed for observing this phenomenon.
We present two families of one-soliton solutions and three families of two-soliton solutions for a generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which is characterized by the time-dependent scattering length and varying potentials. Then, we investigate the propagation of one-soliton and interactions of two-soliton by some selected control functions. The results show that the intensities of one- and two-soliton first increase rapidly to a peak value, and then decay very slowly to the background value; thus, the lifetimes of both one-soliton and two-soliton in Bose–Einstein condensates can be extended largely at least to the order of the lifetime of a Bose–Einstein condensate in real experiments. Our results open up new ways of considerable experimental interest for the management of matter-wave solitons in Bose–Einstein condensates.
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.