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arXiv:1703.00809 · Physical Review A

Kinetic theory of dark solitons with tunable friction

Hilary M. Hurst, Dmitry K. Efimkin, Ian B. Spielman, Victor M. Galitski

Published May 3, 2017• 16 citations
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Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.053604

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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.
We study controllable friction in a system consisting of a dark soliton in a one-dimensional Bose gas and a non-interacting, degenerate Fermi gas. The fermions act as impurity atoms, not part of the original condensate, that scatter off of the soliton. We study semi-classical dynamics of the dark soliton by treating it as a particle with negative mass, and calculate its friction coefficient. Surprisingly, the amount of friction depends 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 compare our results to experimental regimes and conclude that tunable friction has measurable physical consquences in experiments with Bose-Fermi mixtures.
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.
Abstract We study the interaction of an atomic dark–bright soliton in a two-component Bose–Einstein condensate with an impurity modeled by a delta function. In order to capture both elastic and inelastic scattering, we allow for relative oscillations between the dark and bright soliton components as well as higher order internal modes. Using a modified perturbed dynamical variational Lagrangian approximation, we develop an analytical model to capture motion of the center of the mass (elastic scattering) and dominant relative motion (inelastic). Numerical integration further incorporates higher order inelastic effects when the kinetic energy of the dark–bright soliton approaches the impurity energy. We calculate the maximum velocity for a dark–bright soliton and find it is limited to a value below the sound speed, depending on the relative number of atoms present in the bright soliton component and excavated by the dark soliton component, respectively. Above a critical value of the maximum velocity, the two components are no longer described by one center of mass variable and spontaneously develop internal oscillations, eventually breaking apart when pushed to higher velocities. This effect limits the incident kinetic energy in scattering studies and presents a smoking gun experimental signal.
We consider the motion of a matter-wave bright soliton under the influence of a cloud of thermal particles. In the ideal one-dimensional system, the scattering process of the quasiparticles with the soliton is reflectionless; however, the quasiparticles acquire a phase shift. In the realistic system of a Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a tight waveguide trap, the transverse degrees of freedom generate an extra nonlinearity in the system which gives rise to finite reflection and leads to dissipative motion of the soliton. We calculate the velocity and temperature-dependent frictional force and diffusion coefficient of a matter-wave bright soliton immersed in a thermal cloud.
The statics, stability, and dynamical properties of dark-bright soliton pairs are investigated here, motivated by applications in a homogeneous two-component repulsively interacting Bose-Einstein condensate. One of the intraspecies interaction coefficients is used as the relevant parameter controlling the deviation from the integrable Manakov limit. Two different families of stationary states are identified consisting of dark-bright solitons that are either antisymmetric (out-of-phase) or asymmetric (mass imbalanced) with respect to their bright soliton. Both of the above dark-bright configurations coexist at the integrable limit of equal intra and interspecies repulsions and are degenerate in that limit. However, they are found to bifurcate from it in a transcritical bifurcation. This bifurcation interchanges the stability properties of the bound dark-bright pairs rendering the antisymmetric states unstable and the asymmetric ones stable past the associated critical point (and vice versa before it). Finally, on the dynamical side, it is found that large kinetic energies and thus rapid soliton collisions are essentially unaffected by the intraspecies variation, while cases involving near equilibrium states or breathing dynamics are significantly modified under such a variation.