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Physical Review A

Quantized reflection of a soliton by a vibrating atomic mirror

Wei Xiong, Peng Gao, Zhan-Ying Yang, Wen‐Li Yang

Published Aug 1, 2023• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We numerically study the dynamics of a one-dimensional matter-wave soliton colliding with a vibrating atomic mirror. After colliding, the soliton splits into several wave packets with discrete momentum, and the kinetic energy of internal atoms is quantized. The reflected wave packets are originally diffusing but can form soliton states by quenching the nonlinear strength. The number and total kinetic energy of wave packets are obviously dependent on the vibrating amplitude and frequency of the mirror. We extend the physical system to an atomic mirror with double-frequency vibration, where the property of energy quantization also occurs and is related to the difference frequency. Our results may provide an effective way to prepare and manipulate matter-wave solitons, and are expected to contribute to the development of soliton interferometers.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.108.023303

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We numerically study the dynamics of a one-dimensional matter-wave soliton colliding with a vibrating atomic mirror. After colliding, the soliton splits into several wave packets with discrete momentum, and the kinetic energy of internal atoms is quantized. The reflected wave packets are originally diffusing but can form soliton states by quenching the nonlinear strength. The number and total kinetic energy of wave packets are obviously dependent on the vibrating amplitude and frequency of the mirror. We extend the physical system to an atomic mirror with double-frequency vibration, where the property of energy quantization also occurs and is related to the difference frequency. Our results may provide an effective way to prepare and manipulate matter-wave solitons, and are expected to contribute to the development of soliton interferometers.
We study the dynamics of the matter-wave soliton interacting with a vibrating mirror created by an evanescent light and provide a quantum scattering picture for the time-domain diffraction of the matter-wave soliton. Under Kramers-Henneberger (KH) transformation, i.e., in a vibrating coordinate, the vibration of the mirror can be cast to an effective gauge field. We then can exploit the Dyson series and the quantum scattering theory to investigate the dynamics of the soliton that moves in the effective gauge field and is reflected by a static mirror. Our analytical theory can quantitatively deduce the locations and the relative weights of the scattered wave packets, which is consistent with our numerical simulations of directly solving a nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. In particular, for a two-frequency vibrating case, our theory predicts some interesting multipeak sideband structures in the diffracted matter-wave distributions, which can be resorted to the resonance of two frequencies. Underlying mechanisms and possible applications are discussed.
We consider a matter-wave bright soliton interferometer composed of a harmonic potential trap with a Rosen-Morse barrier at its center on which an incident soliton collides and splits into two solitons. These two solitons recombine after a dipole oscillation in the trap at the position of the barrier. We focus on the characterization of the splitting process in the case in which the reflected and transmitted solitons have the same number of atoms. We obtain that the velocity of the split solitons strongly depends on the nonlinearity and on the width of the barrier and that the reflected soliton is in general slower than the transmitted one. Also, we study the phase difference acquired between the two solitons during the splitting and we fit semianalytically the main dependences with the velocity of the incident soliton, the nonlinearity, and the width of the barrier. The implementation of the full interferometer sequence is tested by means of the phase imprinting method.
Abstract We present a possible way to control matter-wave solitons, which is through the collision between solitons and an accelerating atomic mirror. The acceleration of the mirror has a nontrivial effect on the dynamical characters of the reflected solitons. In the one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensates, when the acceleration of the mirror has the identical direction with the initial soliton’s velocity, the soliton will diffuse after collision; in the contrasting case, the soliton will shrink and then diffuse. We quantitatively explain the above dynamical phenomena by analyzing the atoms’ movement in the soliton, and demonstrate that the method can generate a similar effect to the phase imprinting technology. Moreover, considering the dipolar effect between atoms, this approach can be used for the generation and control of breathing solitons.
In this thesis we study, analytically and numerically, the dynamics of a bright matter-wave soliton formed from a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interatomic interactions, confined by a one dimensional harmonic or double-well trapping potential, and subject to weak periodic driving. Such systems have potential applications in metrology, specifically in the use of atom interferometers for high precision inertial and gravitational field sensing. The localised and dynamically robust nature of matter-wave solitons may help overcome limitations such as wavepacket spreading in current atom interferometry experiments. A typical matter-wave interferometer involves a condensate trapped in a double-well potential. Being able to manipulate the tunnelling behaviour of a matter-wave soliton in potentials such as a double-well would thus give greater control in setting up these experiments. This also has a bearing upon the broader problem of transport of matter-wave solitons across potential barriers. These are questions which are largely unanswered in the current literature. We understand the tunnelling behaviour of a matter-wave soliton in a driven double well potential by first studying the fundamental mechanisms by which energy is transferred to a soliton in a driven harmonic potential. In this way our work also contributes more generally to the problem of transport in driven potentials. Within the mean field approximation, we show that efficient energy transfer to the soliton occurs in two frequency regimes: on resonance with the trapping frequency and on resonance with the internal mode frequency of the soliton. The former regime is well described by modelling the soliton effectively as a rigid particle, and in this regime energy transfer occurs due to parametric driving. In the latter regime, the extended nature of the soliton is important and energy transfer occurs due to internal mode coupling: a coupling between the width oscillations of the soliton and its translational motion. We find that in this internal mode coupling regime the soliton is unstable to decay. We thus show that effective particle regime is the more promising for efficiently exciting a bright matter-wave soliton to tunnel across a potential barrier, while preserving its form.
We consider, by analytical and numerical means, the dynamics of a matter-wave soliton bouncing on the reflecting surface (atomic mirror) under the influence of gravity, when twobody interactions between atoms are periodically modulated in time. The analytical description is based on the variational approach. The frequencies of small amplitude oscillations of the soliton's center-of-mass and width are obtained. Analytical predictions are compared to the results of numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and qualitative agreement between them is found.
Cesium atoms prepared in a state of well-defined total energy have been reflected from a vibrating mirror, causing the matter waves to be phase modulated. The mirror is an evanescent light wave whose intensity is modulated in time at a frequency $\ensuremath{\nu}$ in the range 0 to 2 MHz; the atoms are reflected at normal incidence. The resulting beam consists of a ``carrier'' plus various sidebands corresponding to de Broglie waves propagating at different velocities. The precision and flexibility of this technique make it a promising tool in atom optics.