We investigate the energy-velocity dispersion relation of spin solitons with arbitrary initial velocities. Based on the dispersion relation, we further characterize the inertial mass of a spin soliton and find two critical velocities to distinguish between the positive mass and negative mass. One critical velocity separates the initial negative and positive masses, and the other denotes the velocity for negative-positive mass transition during an acceleration process. With the aid of the two critical velocities, we further propose two possible ways to observe the pure negative mass effect of a spin soliton. Moreover, the relations between the soliton's width and its velocity are discussed according to the variational results. We report that the soliton width can become narrower with larger moving speed (when a spin soliton possesses positive mass), in sharp contrast to the dark solitons reported before. These results would motivate experiments to observe negative mass effects of solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates.
We investigate the energy-velocity dispersion relation of spin solitons with arbitrary initial velocities. Based on the dispersion relation, we further characterize the inertial mass of a spin soliton and find two critical velocities to distinguish between the positive mass and negative mass. One critical velocity separates the initial negative and positive masses, and the other denotes the velocity for negative-positive mass transition during an acceleration process. With the aid of the two critical velocities, we further propose two possible ways to observe the pure negative mass effect of a spin soliton. Moreover, the relations between the soliton's width and its velocity are discussed according to the variational results. We report that the soliton width can become narrower with larger moving speed (when a spin soliton possesses positive mass), in sharp contrast to the dark solitons reported before. These results would motivate experiments to observe negative mass effects of solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates.
We obtain a striking spin soliton in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate and investigate its motions in the presence of a constant force. The initially static spin soliton first moves in a direction opposite to the force and then changes direction, showing an extraordinary ac oscillation. The underlying mechanism is uncovered: the spin soliton can exhibit a periodic transition between negative and positive inertial mass because of a particular relation between its energy and moving velocity. We then develop a quasiparticle model that can account for this extraordinary oscillation. Important implications and possible applications are discussed.
Solitons in multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates have been paid much attention, due to the stability and wide applications of them. The exact soliton solutions are usually obtained for integrable models. In this paper, we present four families of exact spin soliton solutions for non-integrable cases in spin-1 Bose-Einstein Condensates. The whole particle density is uniform for the spin solitons, which is in sharp contrast to the previously reported solitons of integrable models. The spectrum stability analysis and numerical simulation indicate the spin solitons can exist stably. The spin density redistribution happens during the collision process, which depends on the relative phase and relative velocity between spin solitons. The non-integrable properties of the systems can bring spin solitons experience weak amplitude and location oscillations after collision. These stable spin soliton excitations could be used to study the negative inertial mass of solitons, the dynamics of soliton-impurity systems, and the spin dynamics in Bose-Einstein condensates.
We investigate the different types of matter-wave solitons in spin-orbit-coupled spin-2 spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. Using mean-field theory and adopting the multiscale perturbation method, the original five-component Gross-Pitaevskii spin-orbit-coupled spin-2 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate model can be reduced to a single effective nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which allows us to find analytical soliton solutions of this system. In this way, for different regimes of the spin-orbit coupling, Raman coupling, and interatomic interactions, we find approximate bright and dark soliton solutions. Particularly, the type of solitons depends on the dispersion properties of the system. When the lowest-energy band has a single-well structure, we find there only exist positive mass bright or dark solitons due to the dispersion coefficient of effective nonlinear Shrödinger equation always positive. However, when the lowest-energy band has a double-well structure, there will appear positive (negative) mass bright or dark solitons because the sign of the dispersion coefficient can be positive (negative) under different momentum. We employ direct numerical simulation of the original five-component Gross-Pitaevskii equations to confirm the analytical results.
Negative effective masses can be realized by engineering the dispersion relation of a variety of quantum systems. A recent experiment with spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates has shown that a negative effective mass can halt the free expansion of the condensate and lead to fringes in the density [M. A. Khamehchi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 155301 (2017)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.118.155301]. Here, we show that the underlying cause of these observations is the self-interference of the wave packet that arises when only one of the two effective mass parameters that characterize the dispersion of the system is negative. We show that spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates may access regimes where both mass parameters controlling the propagation and diffusion of the condensate are negative, which leads to the novel phenomenon of counterpropagating self-interfering packets.
We study the dynamics of one-dimensional solitons in the attractive and repulsive Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) loaded into an optical lattice (OL), which is combined with an external parabolic potential. First, we demonstrate analytically that, in the repulsive BEC, where the soliton is of the gap type, its effective mass is negative. This gives rise to a prediction for the experiment: such a soliton cannot be not held by the usual parabolic trap, but it can be captured (performing harmonic oscillations) by an anti-trapping inverted parabolic potential. We also study the motion of the soliton a in long system, concluding that, in the cases of both the positive and negative mass, it moves freely, provided that its amplitude is below a certain critical value; above it, the soliton’s velocity decreases due to the interaction with the OL. At a late stage, the damped motion becomes chaotic. We also investigate the evolution of a two-soliton pulse in the attractive model. The pulse generates a persistent breather, if its amplitude is not too large; otherwise, fusion into a single fundamental soliton takes place. Collisions between two solitons captured in the parabolic trap or anti-trap are considered too. Depending on their amplitudes and phase difference, the solitons either perform stable oscillations, colliding indefinitely many times, or merge into a single soliton. Effects reported in this work for BECs can also be formulated for optical solitons in nonlinear photonic crystals. In particular, the capture of the negative-mass soliton in the anti-trap implies that a bright optical soliton in a self-defocusing medium with a periodic structure of the refractive index may be stable in an anti-waveguide. 1 1
The recent experimental realization of spin-orbit coupling for ultracold atomic gases opens a new avenue for engineering solitons with internal spatial structures through tuning atomic band dispersions. However, the types of the resulting stripe solitons in a spin-1/2 Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) have been limited to dark-dark or bright-bright with the same density profiles for different spins. Here we propose that general types of stripe solitons, including magnetic stripe solitons (e.g., dark-bright) and localized stripe waves (neither bright nor dark), could be realized in a spin-1 BEC with widely tunable band dispersions through modulating the coupling between three spin states and the linear momentum of atoms. Surprisingly, a moving magnetic stripe soliton can possess both negative and positive effective masses at different velocities, leading to a zero-mass soliton at certain velocity. Our work showcases the great potential of realizing novel types of solitons through band dispersion engineering, which may provide a new approach for exploring soliton physics in many physical branches.