Modulational instability of matter waves under strong nonlinearity management

We study modulational instability of matter-waves in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) under strong temporal nonlinearity-management. Both BEC in an optical lattice and homogeneous BEC are considered in the framework of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, averaged over rapid time modulations. For a BEC in an optical lattice, it is shown that the loop formed on a dispersion curve undergoes transformation due to the nonlinearity-management. A critical strength for the nonlinearity-management strength is obtained that changes the character of instability of an attractive condensate. MI is shown to occur below (above) the threshold for the positive (negative) effective mass. The enhancement of number of atoms in the nonlinearity-managed gap soliton is revealed.     

Motion of a Bose-Einstein Condensate Bright Soliton Incident on a Step-Like Potential

The motion characteristics of a Bose-Einstein condensate bright soliton incident on a local step-like potential barrier are investigated analytically by means of the variational approach. The dynamics of the soliton-potential interaction is studied as well. Then the results are verified by direct numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. It is found that a moving bright soliton can be reflected from or pass over a step-like potentiaI in a controllable fashion, the critical velocity depends on the width of the soliton and the parameters of the step, and the motion trajectory of the soliton does not depend on its phase. The atom density envelope of the soliton is changed as the result of the interaction between the soliton and the step-like potential.     

Modulating the amplitude of dark soliton by scattering-length management in Bose-Einstein condensates

We present a family of soliton solutions of the quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates with time-dependent scattering length, by developing multiple-scale method combined with truncated Painlevé expansion. Then, by numerical calculating the solutions, it is shown that there exhibit two types of dark solitons—black soliton (the zero minimum amplitude at its center) and gray soliton (the minimum density does not drop to zero) in a repulsive condensate. Furthermore, we propose experimental protocols to realize the exchange between black and gray solitons by varying the scattering length via the Feshbach resonance in currently experimental conditions.     

Dark Soliton of a Growing Bose--Einstein Condensate in an External Trap

The dynamics of dark soliton in a growing Bose-Einstein condensate with an external magnetic trap are investigated by the variational approach based on the renormalized integrals of motion. The stationary states as physical solutions to the describing equation are obtained, and the evolution of the dark soliton is numerically simulated. The numerical results confirm the theoretical analysis and show that the dynamics depend strictly on the initial condition, the gain coefficient and the external potential.     

Ratchet-induced matter-wave transport and soliton collisions in Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the dynamics of bright matter-wave solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate with negative scattering length under the influence of a time-periodic ratchet potential. The potential is formed by a one-dimensional bichromatic optical lattice which flashes on and off so that the time average of its amplitude vanishes. Due to the broken space and time-reversal symmetries of the potential, the soliton is transported with a nonzero average velocity. By employing the non-dissipative mean-field model for the matter waves, we study the dependence of the transport velocity on the initial state of the soliton and show how the properties of the individual localized states affect the outcome of their collisions. A useful insight into the transport properties is provided by Hamiltonian theory for the mean field, which treats the extended matter-wave excitation as an effective classical particle.     

Matter-wave interference in Bose-Einstein condensates: A dispersive hydrodynamic perspective

The interference pattern generated by the merging interaction of two Bose-Einstein condensates reveals the coherent, quantum wave nature of matter. An asymptotic analysis of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the small dispersion (semiclassical) limit, experimental results, and three-dimensional numerical simulations show that this interference pattern can be interpreted as a modulated soliton train generated by the interaction of two rarefaction waves propagating through the vacuum. The soliton train is shown to emerge from a linear, trigonometric interference pattern and is found by use of the Whitham modulation theory for nonlinear waves. This dispersive hydrodynamic perspective offers a new viewpoint on the mechanism driving matter-wave interference.     

Dark soliton interaction of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice

We study the magnetic soliton dynamics of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice which results in an effective Hamiltonian of anisotropic pseudospin chain. An equation of nonlinear Schrödinger type is derived and exact magnetic soliton solutions are obtained analytically by means of Hirota method. Our results show that the critical external field is needed for creating the magnetic soliton in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. The soliton size, velocity and shape frequency can be controlled in practical experiment by adjusting the magnetic field. Moreover, the elastic collision of two solitons is investigated in detail.     

Slowly moving matter-wave gap soliton propagation in weak random optical lattices

We systematically investigate slowly moving matter-wave gap soliton propagation in weak random optical lattices. With the weak randomness, an effective-particle theory is constructed to show that the motion of a gap soliton is similar to a particle moving in random potentials. Based on the effective-particle theory, the effects of the randomness on gap solitons are obtained and the trajectories of gap solitons are well predicted. Moreover, the general laws that describe the movement depending on the weak randomness are obtained. We find that with an increase of the random strength, the ensemble-average velocity reduces slowly and the reflection probability becomes larger. The theoretical results based on the effective-particle theory are confirmed by the numerical simulations based on the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.     

Matter wave soliton collisions in the quasi one-dimensional potential

We consider soliton solutions of a two-dimensional nonlinear system with the self-focusing nonlinearity and a quasi 1D confining potential, taking harmonic potential as an example. We investigate a single soliton in detail and find criterion for possible collapse. This information is then used to investigate the dynamics of the two soliton collision. In this dynamics we identify three regimes according to the relation between nonlinear interaction and the excitation energy: elastic collision, excitation and collapse regime. We show that surprisingly accurate predictions can be obtained from variational analysis.     

Dynamics of Bright Solitons in Bose-Einstein Condensates with Complicated Potential

We present analytical solutions of the one-dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equations of Bose-Einstein condensates in an expulsive parabolic background with a complex potential and gravitational field, by performing the Darboux transformation from a trivial seed solution. It is shown that under a safe range of parameter, the shape of bright soliton can be controlled well by adjusting the experimental parameter of the ratio of axial oscillation to radial oscillation and feeding condensates from a thermal cloud. The gravitational field can change the contrail of the bright soliton trains without changing their peak and width.     

Controlled Manipulation with a Bose--Einstein Condensates N-Soliton Train under the Influence of Harmonic and Tilted Periodic Potentials

A model of the perturbed complex Toda chain （PCTC） to describe the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate （BEC） N-soliton train trapped in an applied combined external potential consisting of both a weak harmonic and tilted periodic component is first developed. Using the developed theory, the BEC N-soliton train dynamics is shown to be well approximated by 4N coupled nonlinear differential equations, which describe the fundamental interactions in the system arising from the interplay of amplitude, velocity, centre-of-mass position, and phase. The simplified analytic theory allows for an efficient and convenient method for characterizing the BEC N-soliton train behaviour. It further gives the critical values of the strength of the potential for which one or more localized states can be extracted from a soliton train and demonstrates that the BEC N-soliton train can move selectively from one lattice site to another by simply manipulating the strength of the potential.     

Matter-wave solitons in the presence of collisional inhomogeneities: Perturbation theory and the impact of derivative terms

We study the dynamics of bright and dark matter-wave solitons in the presence of a spatially varying nonlinearity. When the spatial variation does not involve zero crossings, a transformation is used to bring the problem to a standard nonlinear Schrödinger form, but with two additional terms: an effective potential one and a non-potential term. We illustrate how to apply perturbation theory of dark and bright solitons to the transformed equations. We develop the general case, but primarily focus on the non-standard special case whereby the potential term vanishes, for an inverse square spatial dependence of the nonlinearity. In both cases of repulsive and attractive interactions, appropriate versions of the soliton perturbation theory are shown to accurately describe the soliton dynamics.     

Complete and orthonormal eigenfunctions of excitations to a one-dimensional dark soliton

We study linear excitations to a one-dimensional dark soliton described by a defocusing nonlinear Schödinger equation. By solving an eigenvalue problem for the excitations we obtain all eigenvalues and eigenfunctions and prove rigorously that these eigenfunctions are orthonormal and form a complete set. We then use the eigenfunctions to obtain the exact form of linear excitations for any given initial condition and to investigate the transverse stability of the dark soliton. The rigorous results reported in the present work can be applied to study the dynamics of dark solitons in various nonlinear optical media and Bose-Einstein condensates.     

Nonlinear responses of the periodic structure composed of single negative materials

We investigate the nonlinear responses of the one-dimensional periodic structure containing alternate single negative materials. The transmission property of this nonlinear periodic structure is studied and the bistable behavior is found. Similar as in the linear periodic structure, the transmission property of this nonlinear structure in the zero phase (zero-?) gap region is found to be relatively insensitive to the incident angle from 0° to 30°, in comparison with that in the Bragg gap. Especially, the transmissions associated with the zero-? gap reach the peaks at almost the same input intensity for different incident angles. Another merit of the transmission property in the zero-? gap is that a lower threshold is needed to achieve the bistability than in the Bragg gap. The electric field distribution in the system is further studied. We observe the zero-? gap soliton and compare it with the usual Bragg gap soliton. The differences between these two kinds of solitons are analyzed, and the zero-? gap soliton is shown to be insensitive to the incident angle. In the end, we find that the transmission and the soliton in the zero-? gap are also weakly dependent on the loss and the scaling in contrast to that in the Bragg gap.     

Nonautonomous solitons of Bose-Einstein condensation in a linear potential with an arbitrary time-dependence

In the presence of a linear potential with an arbitrary time-dependence, Hirota method is developed carefully for applying into the effective mean-field model of quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensation with repulsive interaction. We obtain the exact nonautonomous soliton solution (NSS) analytically. These solutions show that the time-dependent potential can affect the velocity of NSS. In some special cases the velocity has the character of both increase and oscillation with time. A detail analysis for the asymptotic behaviour of solutions shows that the collision of two NSSs is elastic.     

Hirota method for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with an arbitrary linear time-dependent potential

In this paper, a Hirota method is developed for applying to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with an arbitrary time-dependent linear potential which denotes the dynamics of soliton solutions in quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensation. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation is decoupled to two equations carefully. With a reasonable assumption the one- and two-soliton solutions are constructed analytically in the presence of an arbitrary time-dependent linear potential.     

Collision dynamics of two Bose–Einstein condensates in the presence of Raman coupling

A collision of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in the presence of Raman coupling is proposed and studied by numerical simulations. Raman transitions are found to be able to reduce collision-produced irregular excitations by forming a time-averaged attractive optical potential. Raman transitions also support a kind of dark soliton pair in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates. Soliton pairs and their remnant single solitons are shown to be controllable by adjusting the initial relative phase between the two colliding condensates or the two-photon detuning of Raman transitions. Received: 5 February 2001 / Published online: 27 April 2001     

Dynamics of Bright/Dark Solitons in Bose--Einstein Condensates with Time-Dependent Scattering Length and External Potential

We present an analytical study on the dynamics of bright and dark solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates with time-varying atomic scattering length in a time-varying external parabolic potential. A set of exact soliton solutions of the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation are obtained, including fundamental bright solitons, higher-order bright solitons, and dark solitons. The results show that the soliton＇s parameters （amplitude, width, and period） can be changed in a controllable manner by changing the scattering length and external potential. This may be helpful to design experiments.     

Internal vibrations of nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger soliton

We prove that the nonlocality is a source of the internal mode generation in a bright soliton of the nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equation, at least in the weak nonlocality limit. The internal mode bifurcates from the edge of the continuous spectrum of the linearized eigenvalue problem into the gap of this spectrum. A dependence of the internal mode propagation constant position in the gap on the nonlocality rate is established. It is shown that the vibration amplitude of the soliton decays inversely proportional to the propagation distance, as in the local models.     

Formal analytical solutions for the Gross-Pitaevskii equation

Considering the Gross-Pitaevskii integral equation we are able to formally obtain an analytical solution for the order parameter Φ(x) and for the chemical potential μ as a function of a unique dimensionless non-linear parameter Λ. We report solutions for different ranges of values for the repulsive and the attractive non-linear interactions in the condensate. Also, we study a bright soliton-like variational solution for the order parameter for positive and negative values of Λ. Introducing an accumulated error function we have performed a quantitative analysis with respect to other well-established methods as: the perturbation theory, the Thomas-Fermi approximation, and the numerical solution. This study gives a very useful result establishing the universal range of the Λ-values where each solution can be easily implemented. In particular, we showed that for Λ<−9, the bright soliton function reproduces the exact solution of GPE wave function.