Excitation modes of bright matter-wave solitons

Carli, Andrea Di and Colquhoun, Craig D. and Henderson, Grant and Flannigan, Stuart and Oppo, Gian-Luca and Daley, Andrew J. and Kuhr, Stefan and Haller, Elmar (2019) Excitation modes of bright matter-wave solitons. Physical Review Letters, 123 (12). 123602. ISSN 1079-7114 (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.123602)

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Abstract

We experimentally study the excitation modes of bright matter-wave solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional geometry. The solitons are created by quenching the interactions of a Bose-Einstein condensate of cesium atoms from repulsive to attractive in combination with a rapid reduction of the longitudinal confinement. A deliberate mismatch of quench parameters allows for the excitation of breathing modes of the emerging soliton and for the determination of its breathing frequency as a function of atom number and confinement. In addition, we observe signatures of higher-order solitons and the splitting of the wave packet after the quench. Our experimental results are compared to analytical predictions and to numerical simulations of the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation.