Q-ball dynamics from atomic Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper explores the analogy between Q-balls in relativistic field theories and solitons in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, highlighting experimental conditions for observing Q-ball-like behavior.

Contribution

It demonstrates how Bose-Einstein condensates can serve as a laboratory analog for studying Q-balls, including their formation and collisions, under specific trapping conditions.

Findings

Genuine solitons appear in elongated traps, enabling experimental study.

Q-ball properties can be numerically simulated in BEC systems.

Conditions for extending the analogy to 3D are proposed.

Abstract

Relativistic scalar field theories with a conserved global charge Q possess often (meta)stable spherically symmetric soliton solutions, called Q-balls. We elaborate on the perfect formal analogy which exists between Q-balls, and spherically symmetric solitons in certain non-relativistic atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, for which the dominant interatomic interaction can be tuned attractive. In a harmonic trap, present in existing experiments, the Q-ball solution is modified in an essential way. If the trap is significantly prolongated in one direction, however, then genuine solitons do appear, and actual experimental data can be obtained for some of the Q-ball properties studied numerically in the relativistic cosmological context, such as their formation and collisions. We also suggest conditions under which the same cosmologically relevant analogies could be extended to the fully three-dimensional case.