Dispersion Management of Ultraslow Light in a Bose-Einstein Condensate via Trap Curvature

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the curvature of the trapping potential in a Bose-Einstein condensate affects the dispersion of ultraslow light pulses, providing analytical solutions and comparing them with numerical methods.

Contribution

It introduces analytical and semi-analytical solutions for ultraslow pulse propagation in inhomogeneous BECs considering trap curvature effects.

Findings

Trap curvature influences pulse dispersion significantly

Analytical solutions match well with numerical methods

Dispersion management strategies are identified

Abstract

One dimensional propagation of ultraslow optical pulses in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate taking into account the dispersion and the spatial inhomogeneity is investigated. Analytical and semi-analytical solutions of the dispersive inhomogeneous wave equation modeling the ultraslow pulse propagation are developed and compared against the standard wave equation solvers based upon Cranck-Nicholson and pseudo-spectral methods. The role of curvature of the trapping potential of the condensate on the amount of dispersion of the ultraslow pulse is pointed out.