We report on the generation, subsequent oscillation and interaction of a pair of matter wave dark solitons. These are created by releasing a Bose-Einstein condensate from a double well potential into a harmonic trap in the crossover regime between one dimension (1D) and three dimensions (3D). Multiple oscillations and collisions of the solitons are observed, in quantitative agreement with simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. An effective particle picture is developed and confirms that the deviation of the observed oscillation frequencies from the asymptotic prediction νz/ √ 2, where νz is the longitudinal trapping frequency, results from the dimensionality of the system and the soliton interactions.

Experimental configuration. The sensors are placed four sites from the actuator and at the end of the crystal. The sensor located four sites away from the actuator is used to measure the localized vibrations within the vicinity of the defect (without being in direct contact with it, so as to avoid affecting its dynamics). The sensor at the end of the crystal is used to measure the transmission through the crystal. For our rectifier geometry, the bifurcation-based rectification mechanism is only clearly evident with a defect placed two particles away from the actuator. For defect particles placed three or more particles away from the actuator, the high attenuation of the signal (with frequency within the band gap 1 ) does not allow sufficient energy from the actuator to arrive to the defect particle.For defect particles placed next to the actuator, we observe that the effect of the boundary is dominant, and the dynamics of the system becomes more chaotic. The chain length of 19 particles was selected as a balance between having high enough attenuation (arising from the band gap) to demonstrate the rectification effect, and having a small enough dissipation of the signal to maximize the experimental tractability. In our numerical simulations, we observe that decreasing the dissipation in the system can increase the transmission efficiency in the forward configuration.

We report the experimental observation of discrete breathers in a one-dimensional diatomic granular crystal composed of compressed elastic beads that interact via Hertzian contact. We first characterize their effective linear spectrum both theoretically and experimentally. We then illustrate theoretically and numerically the modulational instability of the lower edge of the optical band. This leads to the dynamical formation of long-lived breather structures, whose families of solutions we compute throughout the linear spectral gap. Finally, we observe experimentally such localized breathing modes with quantitative characteristics that agree with our numerical results.

An experimentally realizable scheme of periodic sign-changing modulation of the scattering length is proposed for Bose-Einstein condensates similar to dispersion-management schemes in fiber optics. Because of controlling the scattering length via the Feshbach resonance, the scheme is named Feshbach-resonance management. The modulational-instability analysis of the quasiuniform condensate driven by this scheme leads to an analog of the Kronig-Penney model. The ensuing stable localized structures are found. These include breathers, which oscillate between the Thomas-Fermi and Gaussian configuration, or may be similar to the 2-soliton state of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and a nearly static state ("odd soliton") with a nested dark soliton. An overall phase diagram for breathers is constructed, and full stability of the odd solitons is numerically established.

We consider the stability and dynamics of multiple dark solitons in cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Our study is motivated by the fact that multiple matter-wave dark solitons may naturally form in such settings as per our recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 130401 (2008)]. First, we study the dark soliton interactions and show that the dynamics of well-separated solitons (i.e., ones that undergo a collision with relatively low velocities) can be analyzed by means of particle-like equations of motion. The latter take into regard the repulsion between solitons (via an effective repulsive potential) and the confinement and dimensionality of the system (via an effective parabolic trap for each soliton). Next, based on the fact that stationary, well-separated dark multi-soliton states emerge as a nonlinear continuation of the appropriate excited eigensates of the quantum harmonic oscillator, we use a Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis to systematically study the stability of such structures. We find that for a sufficiently large number of atoms, multiple soliton states may be dynamically stable, while for a small number of atoms, we predict a dynamical instability emerging from resonance effects between the eigenfrequencies of the soliton modes and the intrinsic excitation frequencies of the condensate. Finally we present experimental realizations of multi-soliton states including a three-soliton state consisting of two solitons oscillating around a stationary one.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure