Uniform Bose-Einstein Condensates as Kovaton solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii Equation through a Reverse-Engineered Potential

Abstract

In this work, we consider a ``reverse-engineering'' approach to construct confining potentials that support exact, constant density kovaton solutions to the classical Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) also known as the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE). In the one-dimensional case, the exact solution is the sum of stationary kink and anti-kink solutions, i.e. a kovaton, and in the overlapping region, the density is constant. In higher dimensions, the exact solutions are generalizations of this wave function. In the absence of self-interactions, the confining potential is similar to a smoothed out finite square well with minima also at the edges. When self-interactions are added, a term proportional to $\pm g ψ^{\ast}ψ$ gets added to the confining potential and $\pm g M$, where $M$ is the norm, gets added to the total energy. In the realm of stability analysis, we find (linearly) stable solutions in the case with repulsive self-interactions which also are stable to self-similar deformations. For attractive interactions, however, the minima at the edges of the potential get deeper and a barrier in the center forms as we increase the norm. This leads to instabilities at a critical value of $M$ (related to the number of particles in the BEC). Comparing the stability criteria from Derrick's theorem and Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis stability results, we find that both predict stability for repulsive self-interactions and instability at a critical mass $M$ for attractive interactions. However, the numerical analysis gives a much lower critical mass. The numerical analysis shows further that the initial instabilities violate the symmetry $x\rightarrow-x$ assumed by Derrick's theorem.