Browsing by Author "Malomed, Boris A."

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    Collisions of matter-wave solitons
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2014) Nguyen, Jason H.V.; Dyke, Paul; Luo, De; Malomed, Boris A.; Hulet, Randall G.
    Solitons are localized wave disturbances that propagate without changing shape, a result of a nonlinear interaction that compensates for wave packet dispersion. Individual solitons may collide, but a defining feature is that they pass through one another and emerge from the collision unaltered in shape, amplitude, or velocity, but with a new trajectory reflecting a discontinuous jump. This remarkable property is mathematically a consequence of the underlying integrability of the one-dimensional (1D) equations, such as the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, that describe solitons in a variety of wave contexts, including matter waves [1, 2]. Here we explore the nature of soliton collisions using Bose–Einstein condensates of atoms with attractive interactions confined to a quasi-1D waveguide. Using real-time imaging, we show that a collision between solitons is a complex event that differs markedly depending on the relative phase between the solitons. By controlling the strength of the nonlinearity we shed light on these fundamental features of soliton collisional dynamics, and explore the implications of collisions in the proximity of the crossover between one and three dimensions where the loss of integrability may precipitate catastrophic collapse.
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    Dissociation of One-Dimensional Matter-Wave Breathers due to Quantum Many-Body Effects
    (American Physical Society, 2017) Yurovsky, Vladimir A.; Malomed, Boris A.; Hulet, Randall G.; Olshanii, Maxim
    We use the ab initio Bethe ansatz dynamics to predict the dissociation of one-dimensional cold-atom breathers that are created by a quench from a fundamental soliton. We find that the dissociation is a robust quantum many-body effect, while in the mean-field (MF) limit the dissociation is forbidden by the integrability of the underlying nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The analysis demonstrates the possibility to observe quantum many-body effects without leaving the MF range of experimental parameters. We find that the dissociation time is of the order of a few seconds for a typical atomic-soliton setting.
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    Stable Solitons in Three Dimensional Free Space without the Ground State: Self-Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates with Spin-Orbit Coupling
    (American Physical Society, 2015) Zhang, Yong-Chang; Zhou, Zheng-Wei; Malomed, Boris A.; Pu, Han; Rice Center for Quantum Materials
    By means of variational methods and systematic numerical analysis, we demonstrate the existence of metastable solitons in three dimensional (3D) free space, in the context of binary atomic condensates combining contact self-attraction and spin-orbit coupling, which can be engineered by available experimental techniques. Depending on the relative strength of the intra- and intercomponent attraction, the stable solitons feature a semivortex or mixed-mode structure. In spite of the fact that the local cubic self-attraction gives rise to the supercritical collapse in 3D, and hence the setting produces no true ground state, the solitons are stable against small perturbations, motion, and collisions.