Variational determination of approximate bright matter-wave soliton solutions in anisotropic traps

Billam, T.P.; Wrathmall, S.A.; Gardiner, S.A.

doi:10.1103/physreva.85.013627

Variational determination of approximate bright matter-wave soliton solutions in anisotropic traps

Billam, T.P.; Wrathmall, S.A.; Gardiner, S.A.

Authors

T.P. Billam

Dr Steven Wrathmall s.a.wrathmall@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Professor Simon Gardiner s.a.gardiner@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

We consider the ground state of an attractively interacting atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in a prolate, cylindrically symmetric harmonic trap. If a true quasi-one-dimensional limit is realized, then for sufficiently weak axial trapping this ground state takes the form of a bright soliton solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Using analytic variational and highly accurate numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we systematically and quantitatively assess how solitonlike this ground state is, over a wide range of trap and interaction strengths. Our analysis reveals that the regime in which the ground state is highly solitonlike is significantly restricted and occurs only for experimentally challenging trap anisotropies. This result and our broader identification of regimes in which the ground state is well approximated by our simple analytic variational solution are relevant to a range of potential experiments involving attractively interacting Bose-Einstein condensates.

Citation

Billam, T., Wrathmall, S., & Gardiner, S. (2012). Variational determination of approximate bright matter-wave soliton solutions in anisotropic traps. Physical Review A, 85(1), Article 013627. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.85.013627

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jan 19, 2012
Deposit Date	Jan 26, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Feb 12, 2014
Journal	Physical Review A
Print ISSN	1050-2947
Electronic ISSN	1094-1622
Publisher	American Physical Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	85
Issue	1
Article Number	013627
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.85.013627