Crossover dynamics of dispersive shocks in Bose-Einstein condensates characterized by two and three-body interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how three-body interactions influence the evolution of dispersive shock waves in 1D Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing a crossover from shock trains to soliton collapse by varying atom number.

Contribution

It demonstrates the significant impact of three-atom interactions on shock wave dynamics and introduces a crossover regime in BECs influenced by atom number variations.

Findings

Existence of multiple shock regimes with dark and antidark waves

Transition from shock trains to soliton collapse

Control of regimes via atom number variation

Abstract

We show that the perturbative nonlinearity associated with three-atom interactions, competing with standard two-body repulsive interactions, can change dramatically the evolution of 1D dispersive shock waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate. In particular, we prove the existence of a rich crossover dynamics, ranging from the formation of multiple shocks regularized by coexisting trains of dark and antidark matter waves, to 1D soliton collapse. For a given scattering length, all these different regimes can be accessed by varying the number of atoms in the condensate.