2001/05/30 by Joachim Brand, William P. Reinhardt · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.65.043612
published as Phys. Rev. A 65, 043612 (2002) · 4 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2001/05/30 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
The connection between quantized vortices and dark solitons in a long and thin, waveguide-like trap geometry is explored in the framework of the non-linear Schrödinger equation. Variation of the transverse confinement leads from the quasi-1D regime where solitons are stable to 2D (or 3D) confinement where soliton stripes are subject to a transverse modulational instability known as the ``snake instability''. We present numerical evidence of a regime of intermediate confinement where solitons decay into single, deformed vortices with solitonic properties, also called svortices, rather than vortex pairs as associated with the ``snake'' metaphor. Further relaxing the transverse confinement leads to production of 2 and then 3 vortices, which correlates perfectly with a Bogoliubov-de Gennes stability analysis. The decay of a stationary dark soliton (or, planar node) into a single svortex is predicted to be experimentally observable in a 3D harmonically confined dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensate.