Tunneling Dynamics Between Atomic Bright Solitons

TL;DR

This paper analytically studies tunneling dynamics between bright solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate, revealing nonlinear Josephson oscillations and mechanisms behind soliton breathing behavior.

Contribution

It provides explicit analytical descriptions of tunneling properties, phase diagrams, and conditions for various interaction behaviors of bright solitons.

Findings

Tunneling exhibits nonlinear Josephson oscillations.

Breathing behavior results from tunneling in an effective double-well potential.

Conditions for tunneling, interference, and resonant interactions are clarified.

Abstract

We investigate tunneling behavior between two bright solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive contact interactions between atoms. The explicit tunneling properties including tunneling particles and oscillation period are described analytically, which indicates that the periodic tunneling form is a nonlinear Josephson type oscillation. The results suggest that the breathing behavior of solitons comes from the tunneling mechanism in an effective double-well potential, which is quite different from the modulational instability mechanism for Akhmediev breather and K-M breather. Furthermore, we obtain a phase diagram for two soliton interaction which admits tunneling property, particle-like property, interference property, and a resonant interaction case. The explicit conditions for them are clarified based on the defined critical distance $d_c$ and spatial interference period $D$.