Dynamics and thermodynamics in spinor quantum gases

We discuss magnetism in spinor quantum gases theoretically and experimentally with emphasis on temporal dynamics of the spinor order parameter in the presence of an external magnetic field. In a simple coupled Gross–Pitaevskii picture we observe a dramatic suppression of spin dynamics due to quadratic Zeeman dephasing. In view of an inhomogeneous density profile of the trapped condensate we present evidence of spatial variations of spin dynamics. In addition we study spinor quantum gases as a model system for thermodynamics of Bose–Einstein condensation. As a particular example we present measurements on condensate magnetisation due to the interaction with a thermal bath. PACS 03.75.Mn; 03.75.Fi; 34.50.Pi     

Moving bright solitons in a pseudo-spin polarization Bose-Einstein condensate

We study the moving bright solitons in the weak attractive Bose–Einstein condensate with a spin–orbit interaction. By solving the coupled nonlinear Schr ?dinger equation with the variational method and the imaginary time evolution method,two kinds of solitons(plane wave soliton and stripe solitons) are found in different parameter regions. It is shown that the soliton speed dominates its structure. The detuning between the Raman beam and energy states of the atoms decides the spin polarization strength of the system. The soliton dynamics is also studied for various moving speed and we find that the shape of individual components can be kept when the speed of soliton is low.     

Two types of ground-state bright solitons in a coupled harmonically trapped pseudo-spin polarization Bose-Einstein condensate

We study two types of bright solitons in an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate with a spin-orbit interaction. By solving the coupled nonlinear Schr odinger equations with the variational method and the imaginary time evolution method,fundamental properties of solitons are carefully investigated in different parameter regimes. It is shown that the detuning between the Raman beam and energy states of the atoms dominates the ground state type and spin polarization strength.The soliton dynamics is also studied for various moving velocities for zero and nonzero detuning cases. We find that the shape of individual component solitons can be maintained when the moving speed of solitons is low and the detuning is small in the coupled harmonically trapped pseudo-spin polarization Bose-Einstein condensate.     

Non-autonomous bright matter wave solitons in spinor Bose–Einstein condensates

We investigate the dynamics of bright matter wave solitons in spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates with time modulated nonlinearities. We obtain soliton solutions of an integrable autonomous three-coupled Gross–Pitaevskii (3-GP) equations using Hirota?s method involving a non-standard bilinearization. The similarity transformations are developed to construct the soliton solutions of non-autonomous 3-GP system. The non-autonomous solitons admit different density profiles. An interesting phenomenon of soliton compression is identified for kink-like nonlinearity coefficient with Hermite–Gaussian-like potential strength. Our study shows that these non-autonomous solitons undergo non-trivial collisions involving condensate switching.     

Bright and dark solitons in a quasi-1D Bose-Einstein condensates modelled by 1D Gross-Pitaevskii equation with time-dependent parameters

We investigate the exact bright and dark solitary wave solutions of an effective 1D Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by assuming that the interaction energy is much less than the kinetic energy in the transverse direction. In particular, following the earlier works in the literature Pérez-García et al. (2004) [50], Serkin et al. (2007) [51], Gurses (2007) [52] and Kundu (2009) [53], we point out that the effective 1D equation resulting from the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation can be transformed into the standard soliton (bright/dark) possessing, completely integrable 1D nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation by effecting a change of variables of the coordinates and the wave function. We consider both confining and expulsive harmonic trap potentials separately and treat the atomic scattering length, gain/loss term and trap frequency as the experimental control parameters by modulating them as a function of time. In the case when the trap frequency is kept constant, we show the existence of different kinds of soliton solutions, such as the periodic oscillating solitons, collapse and revival of condensate, snake-like solitons, stable solitons, soliton growth and decay and formation of two-soliton bound state, as the atomic scattering length and gain/loss term are varied. However, when the trap frequency is also modulated, we show the phenomena of collapse and revival of two-soliton like bound state formation of the condensate for double modulated periodic potential and bright and dark solitons for step-wise modulated potentials.     

Bright soliton dynamics in Fourier synthesized optical lattice

We consider the dynamics of bright solitons in one dimensional Bose Einstein condensate with spin orbit coupling and trapped by an optical lattice potential. We mainly focus on the effects of the spin orbit coupling, Rabi coupling and detuning parameter on the soliton dynamics. The solution of the coupled Gross Pitaevskii equation is performed with the help of the variational and numerical methods for various parameters. The population imbalance and the center of mass motion show different dynamic behaviors depending on the parameters. We also obtain traveling bright solitons related with a given finite initial momentum.     

Effects of Quantum Fluctuations on $\mathcal{PT}$-Symmetric Solitons of a Trapped Bose Gas *

Considering the quantum fluctuation effects, the existence and stabilityof solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate subjected in a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric potentialare discussed. Using the variational approach, we investigate how the quantum fluctuationaffects the self-localization and stability of the condensate with attractivetwo-body interactions. The results show that the quantum fluctuation dramaticallyinfluences the shape, width, and chemical potential of the condensate.Analytical variational computation also predicts there exists a positive critical quantumfluctuation strength $q_{c}$ with each fixed attractive two-body interaction $g_{0}$, if thequantum fluctuation strength $q_{0}$ is bigger than $q_{c}$, there is no bright solitonsolution existence. We also study the effects of the quantum fluctuations on the stabilityof solitons using the Vakhitov-Kolokolov (VK) stability criterion. A robust stable brightsoliton will always exist when the quantum fluctuation strength $q_{0}$ belongs tothe parameter regimes $q_{c}\geq q_{0}＞0$.     

Nonlinear dynamics of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential

We examine the nonlinear dynamical behavior of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential. Considering a condensate with large number of atoms, such that it can be described using the mean field theory, we separate the spinor dynamics from the spatial dynamics under the single-mode approximation. We limit ourselves to certain initial conditions under which the spatial mode is frozen so that we can focus on the spinor dynamics only. Identifying collective spin variables of our system, we derive the corresponding nonlinear equations of motion for them. Employing standard stability analysis, we find and characterize fixed points of the system. For a wide range of physical parameters such as tunneling strength and non-linear interactions, as well as for various initial preparations of the system, we identify qualitatively different dynamical regimes possible in the system. In particular, complete and incomplete oscillations of spin variables between quantum wells are found. We also show that by bringing some fixed points close to each other in the phase space of the system, it is possible to induce amplitude modulation to those otherwise regular tunneling oscillations.     

Bright soliton trains of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates

We variationally determine the dynamics of bright soliton trains composed of harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive interatomic interactions. In particular, we obtain the interaction potential between two solitons. We also discuss the formation of soliton trains due to the quantum mechanical phase fluctuations of a one-dimensional condensate.     

Interaction of $F=2$ Spinor Bose Condensate with Driven External Magnetic Fields

We have studied the interaction of $F=2$ spinor Bose condensate with a combination of static and sinusoidal magnetic field $b_l(t)=b_0+b\cos(\omega t)$. We find that the tunneling current among spin 0 and spin $\pm1$, spin 0 and spin $\pm2$, spin $\pm1$ and spin $\pm2$ may exhibit the incremental oscillation behavior, which depends on the field parameters of the reduced amplitudes of the transverse and the longitudinal magnetic fields respectively. This means that the dynamics spin localization can be adjusted experimentally by selecting the less values of the reduced amplitudes of the transverse magnetic field $b_x/\omega$ and those of the longitudinal magnetic field $b/\omega$.     

Controllable magnetic solitons excitations in an atomic chain of spinor Bose–Einstein condensates confined in an optical lattice

We propose an experimental scheme to show that the nonlinear magnetic solitary excitations can be achieved in an atomic spinor Bose–Einstein condensate confined in a blue-detuned optical lattice. Through exact theoretical calculations, we find that the magnetic solitons can be generated by the static magnetic dipole–dipole interaction (MDDI), of which the interaction range can be well controlled. We derive the existence conditions of the magnetic solitons under the nearest-neighboring, the next-nearest-neighboring approximations as well as the long-range consideration. It is shown that the long-range feature of the MDDI plays an important role in determining the existence of magnetic solitons in this system. In addition, to facilitate the experimental observation, we apply an external laser field to drive the lattice, and the existence regions for the magnetic soliton induced by the anisotropic light-induced dipole–dipole interaction are also investigated.     

Vortex phase diagram of F=1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

We have calculated the F=1 ground state of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate trapped harmonic potential with an applied Ioffe-Pitchard magnetic field. The vortex phase diagram is found in the plane spanned by perpendicular and longitudinal magnetic fields. The ferromagnetic condensate has two vortex phases which differ by winding number in the spinor components. The two vortices for the F(z)=-1 antiferromagnetic condensate are separated in space. Moreover, we considered an average local spin || to testify to what extent it is parallel to magnetic field (the nonadiabatic effects). We have shown that the effects are important at vortex cores.     

Dynamics of matter-wave solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates with time-dependent scattering length and complex potentials

We investigate the dynamics of matter-wave solitons in the one-dimensional (1-D)Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation describing Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) withtime-dependent scattering length in varying trapping potentials with feeding/loss term. Byperforming a modified lens-type transformation, we reduce the GP equation into a classicalnonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation with distributed coefficients and find its integrablecondition. Under the integrable condition, we apply the generalized Jacobian ellipticfunction method (GJEFM) and present exact analytical solutions which describe thepropagation of a bright and dark solitons in BECs. Their stability is examined usinganalytic method. The obtained exact solutions show that the amplitude of bright and darksolitons depends on the scattering length, while their motion and the total number of BECatoms depend on the external trapping potential. Our results also shown that the loss ofatoms can dominate the aggregation of atoms by the attractive interaction, and thus thepeak density can decrease in time despite that the strength of the attractive interactionis increased.     

Dynamics of bright soliton in a spin–orbit coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate

We have investigated the dynamics of bright solitons in a spin–orbit coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate analytically and numerically. By using the hyperbolic sine function as the trial function to describe a plane wave bright soliton with a single finite momentum, we have derived the motion equations of soliton's spin and center of mass, and obtained its exact analytical solutions. Our results show that the spin–orbit coupling couples the soliton's spin with its center-of-mass motion, the spin oscillations induced by the exchange of atoms between components result in the periodical oscillation of center-of-mass, and the motion of center of mass of soliton can be viewed as a superposition of periodical and linear motions. Our analytical results have also been confirmed by the direct numerical simulations of Gross–Pitaevskii equations.     

Fission and Fusion of Two Bright Solitons in a Growing Bose--Einstein Condensate

We analytically study the interaction characteristics of two bright solitons in a one-dimensional growing Bose- Einstein condensate with time-dependent periodic atomic scattering length. It is shown that the interaction between two bright solitons can generate fission and fusion in the presence of both time-dependent periodic atomic scattering length and the growing case. Furthermore, we propose experimental protocols to realize these interaction phenomena by varying the scattering length via the Feshbach resonance in the future experiment.     

Spin current in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate induced by a gradient magnetic field

We develop a research of spin currents in a ²³Na spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by applying a magnetic field gradient. The spin current is successfully induced by the spin-dependent force arising from the magnetic field gradient. The dynamics of the spin components under the magnetic force is investigated. The study is promising to be extended to produce a longer spin-coherence and to enhance the sensitivity of the spin-mixing interferometry in a spinor BEC.     

Controlling the amplitude of soliton in agrowing Bose--Einstein condensate by means of Feshbach resonance

By using Darboux transformation, this paper studies analytically the nonlinear dynamics of a one-dimensional growing Bose-Einstein condensate （BEC）. It is shown that the growing model has an important effect on the amplitude of the soliton in the condensates. In the absence of the growing model, there exhibits the stable alternate bright solitons in the condensates. In the presence of the growing model, the obtained results show that the amplitude of the bright soliton decreases （increases） for the BEC growing coefficient Ω 〈 0 （Ω 〉 0）. Furthermore, we propose experimental protocols to manipulate the amplitude of the bright soliton by varying the scattering length via the Feshbach resonance in the future experiment.     

Bright matter-wave soliton collisions in a harmonic trap: regular and chaotic dynamics

Collisions between bright solitary waves in the 1D Gross-Pitaevskii equation with a harmonic potential, which models a trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, are investigated theoretically. A particle analogy for the solitary waves is formulated and shown to be integrable for a two-particle system. The extension to three particles is shown to support chaotic regimes. Good agreement is found between the particle model and simulations of the full wave dynamics, suggesting that the dynamics can be described in terms of solitons both in regular and chaotic regimes, presenting a paradigm for chaos in wave mechanics.