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Controlled formation and reflection of a bright solitary matter-wave
Bright solitons are non-dispersive wave solutions, arising in a diverse range of nonlinear, one-dimensional systems, including atomic Bose–Einstein condensates with attractive interactions. In reality, cold-atom experiments can only approach the idealized one-dimensional limit necessary for the real...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Pub. Group
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3674266/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23673650 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2893 |
Sumario: | Bright solitons are non-dispersive wave solutions, arising in a diverse range of nonlinear, one-dimensional systems, including atomic Bose–Einstein condensates with attractive interactions. In reality, cold-atom experiments can only approach the idealized one-dimensional limit necessary for the realization of true solitons. Nevertheless, it remains possible to create bright solitary waves, the three-dimensional analogue of solitons, which maintain many of the key properties of their one-dimensional counterparts. Such solitary waves offer many potential applications and provide a rich testing ground for theoretical treatments of many-body quantum systems. Here we report the controlled formation of a bright solitary matter-wave from a Bose–Einstein condensate of (85)Rb, which is observed to propagate over a distance of ∼1.1 mm in 150 ms with no observable dispersion. We demonstrate the reflection of a solitary wave from a repulsive Gaussian barrier and contrast this to the case of a repulsive condensate, in both cases finding excellent agreement with theoretical simulations using the three-dimensional Gross–Pitaevskii equation. |
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