Scattering of a dark-bright soliton by an impurity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a dark-bright soliton in a multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensate interacts with a fixed impurity, revealing inelastic scattering and velocity limits based on internal mode excitations.

Contribution

It introduces a variational and perturbation approach to model dark-bright soliton interactions with impurities, highlighting internal mode excitations and velocity constraints.

Findings

Internal modes are excited during impurity interaction.

Maximum soliton velocity is below sound speed and depends on component atom numbers.

High velocities cause soliton breakup and internal oscillations.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a dark-bright soliton interacting with a fixed impurity using a mean-field approach. The system is described by a vector nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE) appropriate to multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates. We use the variational approximation, based on hyperbolic functions, where we have the center of mass of the two components to describe the propagation of the dark and bright components independently. Therefore, it allows the dark-bright soliton to oscillate. The fixed local impurity is modeled by a delta function. Also, we use perturbation methods to derive the equations of motion for the center of mass of the two components. The interaction of the dark-bright soliton with a delta function potential excites different modes in the system. The analytical model capture two of these modes: the relative oscillation between the two components and the oscillation in the widths. The numerical simulations show additional internal modes play an important role in the interaction problem. The excitation of internal modes corresponds to inelastic scattering. In addition, we calculate the maximum velocity for a dark-bright soliton and find it is limited to a value below the sound speed, depending on the relative number of atoms present in the bright soliton component and excavated by the dark soliton component, respectively. Above a critical value of the maximum velocity, the two components are no longer described by one center of mass variable and develop internal oscillations, eventually breaking apart when pushed to higher velocities. This effect limits the incident kinetic energy in scattering studies and presents a smoking gun experimental signal.