Spontaneous symmetry breaking in a nonlinear double-well structure

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nonlinear double-well potential model to study spontaneous symmetry breaking in Bose-Einstein condensates and optical media, revealing stability properties and bifurcation types through analytical and numerical analysis.

Contribution

It presents an analytically solvable delta-function model and a more general finite-width model, demonstrating the transition from subcritical to supercritical bifurcation and stability of asymmetric states.

Findings

Symmetric states are stable up to the SSB bifurcation point.

Asymmetric states become stable in the finite-width model.

Bistability can occur between antisymmetric and asymmetric states.

Abstract

We propose a model of a nonlinear double-well potential (NDWP), alias a double-well pseudopotential, with the objective to study an alternative implementation of the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and optical media, under the action of a potential with two symmetric minima. In the limit case when the NDWP structure is induced by the local nonlinearity coefficient represented by a set of two delta-functions, a fully analytical solution is obtained for symmetric, antisymmetric and asymmetric states. In this solvable model, the SSB bifurcation has a fully subcritical character. Numerical analysis, based on both direct simulations and computation of stability eigenvalues, demonstrates that, while the symmetric states are stable up to the SSB bifurcation point, both symmetric and emerging asymmetric states, as well as all antisymmetric ones, are unstable in the model with the delta-functions. In the general model with a finite width of the nonlinear-potential wells, the asymmetric states quickly become stable, simultaneously with the switch of the SSB bifurcation from the subcritical to supercritical type. Antisymmetric solutions may also get stabilized in the NDWP structure of the general type, which gives rise to a bistability between them and asymmetric states. The symmetric states require a finite norm for their existence, an explanation to which is given. A full diagram for the existence and stability of the trapped states in the model is produced. Experimental observation of the predicted effects should be possible in BEC formed by several hundred atoms.