Realizing bright matter-wave soliton collisions with controlled relative phase

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to generate and control bright matter-wave soliton collisions in Bose-Einstein condensates, analyzing their stability and oscillations to advance atom interferometry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel technique to split condensates into controlled bright solitary waves and studies their stability under various conditions.

Findings

Collisional stability depends on relative phase at low velocities.

Identifies oscillations in stability related to trap anisotropy.

Method could validate mean field models and aid interferometry.

Abstract

We propose a method to split the ground state of an attractively interacting atomic Bose-Einstein condensate into two bright solitary waves with controlled relative phase and velocity. We analyze the stability of these waves against their subsequent re-collisions at the center of a cylindrically symmetric, prolate harmonic trap as a function of relative phase, velocity, and trap anisotropy. We show that the collisional stability is strongly dependent on relative phase at low velocity, and we identify previously unobserved oscillations in the collisional stability as a function of the trap anisotropy. An experimental implementation of our method would determine the validity of the mean field description of bright solitary waves, and could prove an important step towards atom interferometry experiments involving bright solitary waves.