Eryk Infeld

Spontaneous symmetry breaking of gap solitons and phase transitions in double-well traps

We introduce a two dimensional model for the Bose-Einstein condensate with both attractive and repulsive nonlinearities. We assume a combination of a double well potential in one direction, and an optical lattice along the perpendicular coordinate. We look for dual core solitons in this model, focusing on their symmetry-breaking bifurcations. The analysis employs a variational approximation, which is verified by numerical results. The bifurcation which transforms antisymmetric gap solitons into asymmetric ones is of supercritical type in the case of repulsion; in the attraction model, increase of the optical latttice strength leads to a gradual transition from subcritical bifurcation (for symmetric solitons) to a supercritical one.

Oscillating Solitons in a Three-Component Bose-Einstein Condensate

We investigate the properties of three component BEC systems with spin exchange interactions. We consider different coupling constants from those very special ones leading to exact solutions known in the literature. When two solitons collide, a spin component oscillation of the two emerging entities is observed. This behavior seems to be generic. A mathematical model is derived for the emerging solitons. It describes the new oscillatory phenomenon extremely well. Surprisingly, the model is in fact an exact solution to the initial equations. This comes as a bonus.

Analytically Solvable Model of Nonlinear Oscillations in a Cold but Viscous and Resistive Plasma

A method for solving model nonlinear equations describing plasma oscillations in the presence of viscosity and resistivity is given. By first going to the Lagrangian variables and then transforming the space variable conveniently, the solution in parametric form is obtained. It involves simple elementary functions. Our solution includes all known exact solutions for an ideal cold plasma and a large class of new ones for a more realistic plasma. A new nonlinear effect is found of splitting of the largest density maximum, with a saddle point between the peaks so obtained. The method may sometimes be useful where inverse scattering fails.

Statics and dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in double square well potentials

We treat the behavior of Bose-Einstein condensates in double square well potentials of both equal and different depths. For even depth, symmetry preserving solutions to the relevant nonlinear Schrödinger equation are known, just as in the linear limit. When the nonlinearity is strong enough, symmetry breaking solutions also exist, side by side with the symmetric one. Interestingly, solutions almost entirely localized in one of the wells are known as an extreme case. Here we outline a method for obtaining all these solutions for repulsive interactions. The bifurcation point at which, for critical nonlinearity, the asymmetric solutions branch off from the symmetry preserving ones is found analytically. We also find this bifurcation point and treat the solutions generally via a Josephson junction model. When the confining potential is in the form of two wells of different depth, interesting phenomena appear. This is true of both the occurrence of the bifurcation point for the static solutions and also of the dynamics of phase and amplitude varying solutions. Again a generalization of the Josephson model proves useful. The stability of solutions is treated briefly.

Class of compact entities in three-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We introduce a class of soliton like entities in spinor three-component Bose-Einstein condensates. These entities generalize well-known solitons. For special values of coupling constants, the system considered is completely integrable and supports N soliton solutions. The one-soliton solutions can be generalized to systems with different values of coupling constants. However, they no longer interact elastically. When two so-generalized solitons collide, a spin component oscillation is observed in both emerging entities. We propose to call these new found entities oscillatons. They propagate without dispersion and retain their character after collisions. We derive an exact mathematical model for oscillatons and show that the well-known one-soliton solutions are a particular case.

Stabilization of three-dimensional light bullets by a transverse lattice in a Kerr medium with dispersion management

Abstract We demonstrate a possibility to stabilize three-dimensional spatiotemporal solitons (“light bullets”) in self-focusing Kerr media by means of a combination of dispersion management in the longitudinal direction (with the group-velocity dispersion alternating between positive and negative values) and periodic modulation of the refractive index in one transverse direction (out of the two). Assuming the usual model based on the paraxial nonlinear Schrodinger equation for the local amplitude of the electromagnetic field, the analysis relies upon the variational approximation (results of direct three-dimensional simulations will be reported in a follow-up). A predicted stability area is identified in the model’s parameter space. It features a minimum of the necessary strength of the transverse modulation of the refractive index, and finite minimum and maximum values of the soliton’s energy. The former feature is also explained analytically.

Spatial control of the competition between self-focusing and self-defocusing nonlinearities in one- and two-dimensional systems

We introduce a system with competing self-focusing (SF) and self-defocusing (SDF) terms, which have the same scaling dimension. In the one-dimensional (1D) system, this setting is provided by a combination of the SF cubic term multiplied by the delta-function,

Stability analysis of three-dimensional breather solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate

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Superposition solutions to the extended KdV equation for water surface waves

, and a spatially uniform SDF quintic term. This system gives rise to the most general family of 1D-Townes solitons, the entire family being unstable. However, it is completely stabilized by a finite-width regularization of the

A hybrid variational method of describing pulse splitting by dispersion management

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