Variational calculations for anisotropic solitons in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper uses variational Gaussian methods to accurately model anisotropic solitons in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, providing insights into their stability, dynamics, and experimental observability.

Contribution

It introduces an improved superposition of Gaussians ansatz for precise ground state calculations and explores the dynamics and stability boundaries of solitons in dipolar BECs.

Findings

Gaussian superposition yields exact ground state agreement

Boundaries for scattering length for stable solitons identified

Dynamically stabilized solitons can exist at accessible temperatures

Abstract

We present variational calculations using a Gaussian trial function to calculate the ground state of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and to describe the dynamics of the quasi-two-dimensional solitons in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates. Furthermore we extend the ansatz to a linear superposition of Gaussians improving the results for the ground state to exact agreement with numerical grid calculations using imaginary time and split-operator method. We are able to give boundaries for the scattering length at which stable solitons may be observed in an experiment. By dynamical calculations with coupled Gaussians we are able to describe the rather complex behavior of the thermally excited solitons. The discovery of dynamically stabilized solitons indicates the existence of such BECs at experimentally accessible temperatures.