Creation and Characterization of Matter-Wave Breathers

TL;DR

This paper reports the creation and detailed characterization of matter-wave breathers in a Bose-Einstein condensate, exploring their dynamics and potential for studying quantum effects in many-body systems.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate and analyze matter-wave breathers, including 2- and 3-soliton states, with experimental results matching numerical simulations.

Findings

Successful creation of 2-soliton breathers with controlled parameters

Observation of complex dynamics in 3-soliton breathers

Quantitative analysis of effects of aspect ratio and quench strength

Abstract

We report the creation of quasi-1D excited matter-wave solitons, "breathers", by quenching the strength of the interactions in a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interactions. We characterize the resulting breathing dynamics and quantify the effects of the aspect ratio of the confining potential, the strength of the quench, and the proximity of the 1D-3D crossover for the 2-soliton breather. We furthermore demonstrate the complex dynamics of a 3-soliton breather created by a stronger interaction quench. Our experimental results, which compare well with numerical simulations, provide a pathway for utilizing matter-wave breathers to explore quantum effects in large many-body systems.