We consider a model of a matter-wave laser generating a periodic array of solitary-wave pulses. The system, a general version of which was recently proposed by us ( 2005 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 38 4221 ), is composed of two parallel tunnel-coupled cigar-shaped traps (a reservoir and a lasing cavity), solitons being released through a valve at one edge of the cavity. We report a stable lasing mode accounted for by circulations of a narrow soliton in the cavity, which generates an array of strong pulses (with 10 3 –10 4 atoms in each, the array's duty cycle being ≃30%) when the soliton periodically hits the valve.
We consider a model of a matter-wave laser generating a periodic array of solitary-wave pulses. The system, a general version of which was recently proposed by us ( 2005 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 38 4221 ), is composed of two parallel tunnel-coupled cigar-shaped traps (a reservoir and a lasing cavity), solitons being released through a valve at one edge of the cavity. We report a stable lasing mode accounted for by circulations of a narrow soliton in the cavity, which generates an array of strong pulses (with 10 3 –10 4 atoms in each, the array's duty cycle being ≃30%) when the soliton periodically hits the valve.
We propose a system which can generate a periodic array of solitary-wave pulses from a finite reservoir of coherent Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The system is built as a set of two parallel quasi-one-dimensional traps (the reservoir proper and a pulse-generating cavity), which are linearly coupled by the tunneling of atoms. The scattering length is tuned to be negative and small in the absolute value in the cavity, and still smaller but positive in the reservoir. Additionally, a parabolic potential profile is created around the center of the cavity. Both edges of the reservoir and one edge of the cavity are impenetrable. Solitons are released through the other cavity's edge, which is semi-transparent. Two different regimes of the intrinsic operation of the laser are identified: circulations of a narrow wave-function pulse in the cavity, and oscillations of a broad standing pulse. The latter regime is stable, readily providing for the generation of an array containing up to 10,000 permanent-shape pulses. The circulation regime provides for no more than 40 cycles, and then it transforms into the oscillation mode. The dependence of the dynamical regime on parameters of the system is investigated in detail.
In order to manufacture a modelocked, pulsed atom laser, we suggest the idea of making use of the atom-atom repulsion in a BEC to form a toroidal soliton which can then form a reproducible, coherent waveform. The relevant solitons have the form of a kink, or phase-singularity in the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. We suppose that the atoms are all trapped in a deep, toroidal magnetic trap with the central repulsive core potential induced by a blue-detuned laser. We investigate the case of an atom laser environment with a uniform gain provided by the super-saturation technique. We also assume that there is a periodic loss, provided by a synchronized Raman output coupling laser, and show that this combination of gain and periodic loss leads to stable circulating dark solitons.
We consider the stability and dynamics of multiple dark solitons in cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates. Our study is motivated by the fact that multiple matter-wave dark solitons may naturally form in such settings as per our recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 130401 (2008)]. First, we study the dark soliton interactions and show that the dynamics of well-separated solitons (i.e., ones that undergo a collision with relatively low velocities) can be analyzed by means of particle-like equations of motion. The latter take into regard the repulsion between solitons (via an effective repulsive potential) and the confinement and dimensionality of the system (via an effective parabolic trap for each soliton). Next, based on the fact that stationary, well-separated dark multisoliton states emerge as a nonlinear continuation of the appropriate excited eigenstates of the quantum harmonic oscillator, we use a Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis to systematically study the stability of such structures. We find that for a sufficiently large number of atoms, multiple soliton states are dynamically stable, while for a small number of atoms, we predict a dynamical instability emerging from resonance effects between the eigenfrequencies of the soliton modes and the intrinsic excitation frequencies of the condensate. Finally, we present experimental realizations of multisoliton states including a three-soliton state consisting of two solitons oscillating around a stationary one and compare the relevant results to the predictions of the theoretical mean-field model.
We study the effects of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in solitons composed of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a dual-core system with dipole-dipole interactions (DDIs) and hopping between the cores. Two realizations of such a matter-wave coupler are introduced: weakly and strongly coupled. The former is based on two parallel pipe-shaped traps, whereas the latter is represented by a single pipe sliced by an external field into parallel layers. The dipoles are oriented along the axes of the pipes. In these systems, the dual-core solitons feature SSB of the supercritical and subcritical types, respectively. Stability regions are identified for symmetric and asymmetric solitons and nonbifurcating antisymmetric solitons, as well as for symmetric flat states, which may also be stable in the strongly coupled system due to competition between the attractive and repulsive intracore and intercore DDIs. The effects of the contact interactions are considered too. Collisions between moving asymmetric solitons in the weakly symmetric system feature an elastic rebound, a merger into a single breather, and passage accompanied by excitation of intrinsic vibrations of the solitons for small, intermediate, and large collision velocities, respectively. A PT-symmetric version of the weakly coupled system is considered briefly, which may be relevant for matter-wave lasers. Stability boundaries for PT-symmetric and -antisymmetric solitons are identified.
We investigate two-dimensional (2D) states in Bose-Einstein condensates with self-attraction or self-repulsion, trapped in an axially symmetric optical-lattice potential periodic along the radius. The states trapped both in the central potential well and in remote circular troughs are studied. In the repulsive mode, a new soliton species is found, in the form of radial gap solitons. The latter solitons are completely stable if they carry zero vorticity (l=0) , while with l not equal 0 they develop a weak azimuthal modulation, which makes them rotating patterns, that persist indefinitely long. In addition, annular gap solitons may support stable azimuthal dark-soliton pairs on their crests. In remote troughs of the attractive model, stable localized states may assume a ringlike shape with weak azimuthal modulation, or shrink into solitons strongly localized in the azimuthal direction, which is explained in the framework of an averaged 1D equation with the cyclic azimuthal coordinate. Numerical simulations of the attractive model also reveal stable necklacelike patterns, built of several strongly localized peaks. Dynamics of strongly localized solitons circulating in the troughs is studied too. While the solitons with sufficiently small velocities are completely stable, fast solitons gradually decay, due to the leakage of matter into the adjacent trough, under the action of the centrifugal force. Investigation of head-on collisions between strongly localized solitons traveling in circular troughs shows that collisions between in-phase solitons in a common trough lead to collapse, while pi-out-of-phase solitons bounce many times, but eventually merge into a single one, without collapsing. In-phase solitons colliding in adjacent circular troughs also tend to merge into a single soliton.
We investigate matter-wave solitons in a binary Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with spin-orbit (SO) coupling, loaded in a one-dimensional (1D) deep optical lattice and a three-dimensional anisotropic magnetic trap, which creates an array of elongated sub-BECs with transverse tunneling. We show that the system supports 1D continuous and discrete solitons localized in the longitudinal (along the array) and the transverse (across the array) directions, respectively. In addition, such solitons are always unpolarized in the zero-momentum state but polarized in finite-momentum states. We also show that the system supports stable two-dimensional semidiscrete solitons, including single- and multiple-peaked ones, localized in both the longitudinal and transverse directions. Stability diagrams for single-peaked semidiscrete solitons in different parameter spaces are identified. The results reported here are beneficial not only for understanding the physical property of SO-coupled BECs but also for generating new types of matter-wave solitons.