Decay of soliton-like perturbations into vortex - anti vortex pairs

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dark soliton-like waves in a trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate decay into vortex-antivortex pairs, using simulations of the 2D Gross-Pitaevskii equation to analyze their instability and decay dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to simulate the decay of soliton-like disturbances into vortex pairs in BECs, highlighting the instability of 2D solitons and their transformation process.

Findings

Soliton-like disturbances decay into vortex pairs.

Decay is accompanied by sound wave emission.

Decay dynamics depend on trapping potential rotation.

Abstract

This paper suggests a method for an experiment to create dark soliton-like waves in a trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). With the phase imprinting method, a soliton-like disturbance is produced along the x-axis. The method is used in two cases (with and without rotation of an asymmetric trapping potential). The disturbance in a two-dimensional system is unstable. The soliton-like perturbation is found to decay into more stable vortex pairs together with a burst of sound wave. The simulations are performed by solving the two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation (2D GPE). The successive dynamics of the wave function are studied by monitoring the evolution of density and phase profile.