Confinement of matter-wave solitons on top of a pedestal-shaped potential

TL;DR

This paper investigates how matter-wave solitons can be confined on a pedestal-shaped potential, demonstrating their trapping, shuttle motion, and matter shedding through numerical simulations, with implications for Bose-Einstein condensate experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of soliton confinement on a pedestal-shaped potential and explores their dynamics, including collision effects and matter shedding, which were not previously detailed.

Findings

Solitons can be trapped and exhibit shuttle motion within the potential.

Reflections cause matter shedding, reducing soliton norm over time.

Collision trajectories show discontinuous jumps and time-shifts.

Abstract

Reflection of wave packets from downward potential steps and attractive potentials, known as a quantum reflection, has been explored for bright matter-wave solitons with the main emphasis on the possibility to trap them on top of a pedestal-shaped potential. In numerical simulations, we observed that moving solitons return from the borders of the potential and remain trapped for a sufficiently long time. The shuttle motion of the soliton is accompanied by shedding some amount of matter at each reflection from the borders of the trap, thus reducing its norm. The one- and two- soliton configurations are considered. A discontinuous jump of trajectories of colliding solitons has been discussed. The time-shift observed in a step-like decay of the moving soliton's norm in the two-soliton configuration is linked to the trajectory jump phenomenon. The obtained results can be of interest for the design of new soliton experiments with Bose-Einstein condensates.