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Physical Review A

Interaction of dark solitons with localized impurities in Bose-Einstein condensates

D. J. Frantzeskakis, Georgios Theocharis, F. Κ. Diakonos, Peter Schmelcher, Yuri S. Kivshar

Published Nov 12, 2002• 109 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the interaction of dark solitons with a localized impurity in Bose-Einstein condensates. We apply the soliton perturbation theory developed earlier in optics for describing the soliton dynamics and soliton-impurity interaction analytically, and then verify the results by direct numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find that a dark soliton can be reflected from or transmitted through a repulsive impurity in a controllable manner, while near the critical point the soliton can be quasitrapped by the impurity. Additionally, we demonstrate that an immobile soliton may be captured and dragged by an adiabatically moving attractive impurity.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.66.053608

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Adopting a mean-field description for a two-component atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, we study the statics and dynamics of dark-bright solitons in the presence of localized impurities. We use adiabatic perturbation theory to derive an equation of motion for the dark-bright soliton center. We show that, counterintuitively, an attractive (repulsive) delta-like impurity, acting solely on the bright-soliton component, induces an effective localized barrier (well) in the effective potential felt by the soliton; this way, dark-bright solitons are reflected from (transmitted through) attractive (repulsive) impurities. Our analytical results for the small-amplitude oscillations of solitons are found to be in good agreement with results obtained via a Bogoliubov--de Gennes analysis and direct numerical simulations.
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We study the one-dimensional dynamics of dark-dark solitons in the miscible regime of two density-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates having repulsive interparticle interactions within each condensate (g>0g>0g>0). By using an adiabatic perturbation theory in the parameter g12/g{g}_{12}/gg12​/g, we show that, contrary to the case of two solitons in scalar condensates, the interactions between solitons are attractive when the interparticle interactions between condensates are repulsive g12>0{g}_{12}>0g12​>0. As a result, the relative motion of dark solitons with equal chemical potential $\ensuremath{\mu}$ is well approximated by harmonic oscillations of angular frequency ${w}_{r}=(\ensuremath{\mu}/\ensuremath{\hbar})\sqrt{(8/15){g}_{12}/g}$. We also show that, in finite systems, the resonance of this anomalous excitation mode with the spin-density mode of lowest energy gives rise to alternating dynamical instability and stability fringes as a function of the perturbative parameter. In the presence of harmonic trapping (with angular frequency $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$) the solitons are driven by the superposition of two harmonic motions at a frequency given by ${w}^{2}={(\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}/\sqrt{2})}^{2}+{w}_{r}^{2}$. When g12<0{g}_{12}<0g12​<0, these two oscillators compete to give rise to an overall effective potential that can be either single well or double well through a pitchfork bifurcation. All our theoretical results are compared with numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the dynamics and the Bogoliubov equations for the linear stability. A good agreement is found between them.
We investigate the dynamics of a binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates in the impurity limit -- where one component is dilute enough to be treated like an impurity -- and confined to two dimensions. Using the mean-field coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations, we find that the binary mixture supports the formation of stable symbiotic dark-bright solitons when the inter- and intra-component interactions are repulsive. We further study the interaction between solitons and observe that the solitons undergo merging and repulsion depending on the relative phase between the bright component of the composite structure.