Symmetry breaking in the collisions of double channel BEC solitons

TL;DR

This paper explores symmetry breaking in the formation and collision dynamics of double channel solitons in an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate, revealing conditions for symmetry loss and the associated collision phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of symmetry breaking in double channel BEC solitons and compares two theoretical approaches to describe this effect.

Findings

Symmetric solitons become asymmetric at high interaction strengths.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs during strong collisions.

Bogoliubov and variational methods yield compatible results.

Abstract

We investigate an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate in two coupled one dimensional channels. In this system a stable double channel soliton can be formed. It is symmetric for small interaction parameters and asymmetric for large ones. We study this symmetry breaking phenomenon in detail. Next, we investigate the dynamics of symmetric double channel soliton collisions. For sufficiently strong interactions we observe spontaneous symmetry breaking during the collision. Approximate considerations based on two different methods, Bogoliubov and variational, are used to describe this effect. The results are compatible.