Transient and stationary chaos of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a moving optical lattice potential

Interplay between spin-orbit couplings and residual interatomic interactions in the modulational instability of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

The nonlinear dynamics induced by the modulation instability (MI) of a binary mixture in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is investigated theoretically under the joint effects of higher-order residual nonlinearities and helicoidal spin-orbit (SO) coupling in a regime of unbalanced chemical potential. The analysis relies on a system of modified coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations on which the linear stability analysis of plane-wave solutions is performed, from which an expression of the MI gain is obtained. A parametric analysis of regions of instability is carried out, where effects originating from the higher-order interactions and the helicoidal spin-orbit coupling are confronted under different combinations of the signs of the intra- and intercomponent interaction strengths. Direct numerical calculations on the generic model support our analytical predictions and show that the higher-order interspecies interaction and the SO coupling can balance each other suitably for stability to take place. Mainly, it is found that the residual nonlinearity preserves and reinforces the stability of miscible pairs of condensates with SO coupling. Additionally, when a miscible binary mixture of condensates with SO coupling is modulationally unstable, the presence of residual nonlinearity may help soften such instability. Our results finally suggest that MI-induced formation of stable solitons in mixtures of BECs with two-body attraction may be preserved by the residual nonlinearity even though the latter enhances the instability.

Phase-controlled and chaos-assisted or -suppressed quantum entanglement for a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate

It has been demonstrated that the presence of chaos may lead to greater entanglement generation for some physical systems. Here, we find different effects of chaos on the spin-motion entanglement for a two-frequency driven Bose-Einstein condensate with spin-orbit coupling. We analytically and numerically demonstrate that classical chaos can assist or suppress entanglement generation, depending on the initial phase differences between two motional states, which can be manipulated by using the known phase-engineering method. The results could be significant in engineering nonlinear dynamics for quantum information processing with many-body entanglement.

Controlling chaotic spin-motion entanglement of ultracold atoms via spin-orbit coupling

We study the spatially chaoticity-dependent spin-motion entanglement of a spin-orbit (SO) coupled Bose-Einstein condensate with a source of ultracold atoms held in an optical superlattice. In the case of phase synchronization, we analytically demonstrate that (a) the SO coupling (SOC) leads to the generation of spin-motion entanglement; (b) the area of the high-chaoticity parameter region inversely relates to the SOC strength which renormalizes the chemical potential; and (c) the high-chaoticity is associated with the lower chemical potential and the larger ratio of the short-lattice depth to the longer-lattice depth. Then, we numerically generate the Poincaré sections to pinpoint that the chaos probability is enhanced with the decrease in the SOC strength and/or the spin-dependent current components. The existence of chaos is confirmed by computing the corresponding largest Lyapunov exponents. For an appropriate lattice depth ratio, the complete stop of one of (or both) the current components is related to the full chaoticity. The results mean that the weak SOC and/or the small current components can enhance the chaoticity. Based on the insensitivity of chaos probability to initial conditions, we propose a feasible scheme to manipulate the ensemble of chaotic spin-motion entangled states, which may be useful in coherent atom optics with chaotic atom transport.

Stationary solutions for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling three-dimensional spherical Bose-Einstein condensates in general potentials

Stationary solutions for the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) confined in three spatial dimensions by general forms of a potential are studied through a perturbation method and also numerically. Note that we study both repulsive and attractive BECs under similar frameworks in order to deduce the effects of the potentials in each case. After outlining the general framework, solutions for a collection of specific confining potentials of physical relevance to experiments on BECs are provided in order to demonstrate the approach. We make several observations regarding the influence of the particular potentials on the behavior of the BECs in these cases, comparing and contrasting the qualitative behavior of the attractive and repulsive BECs for potentials of various strengths and forms. Finally, we consider the nonperturbative where the potential or the amplitude of the solutions is large, obtaining various qualitative results. When the kinetic energy term is small (relative to the nonlinearity and the confining potential), we recover the expected Thomas-Fermi approximation for the stationary solutions. Naturally, this also occurs in the large mass limit. Through all of these results, we are able to understand the qualitative behavior of spherical three-dimensional BECs in weak, intermediate, or strong confining potentials.

Stationary solutions for the 2+1 nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling Bose-Einstein condensates in radial potentials

Stationary solutions for the 2+1 cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a small potential are obtained via a form of perturbation. In particular, perturbations due to small potentials which either confine or repel the BECs are studied, and under arbitrary piecewise continuous potentials, we obtain the general representation for the perturbation theory of radial BEC solutions. Numerical results are also provided for regimes where perturbative results break down (i.e., the large-potential regime). Both repulsive and attractive BECs are considered under this framework. Solutions for many specific confining potentials of physical relevance to experiments on BECs are provided in order to demonstrate the approach. We make several observations regarding the influence of the particular small potentials on the behavior of the BECs.

Stationary solutions for the 1+1 nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling attractive Bose-Einstein condensates in small potentials

Stationary solutions for the 1+1 cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) modeling attractive Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in a small potential are obtained via a form of nonlinear perturbation. The focus here is on perturbations to the bright soliton solutions due to small potentials which either confine or repel the BECs: under arbitrary piecewise continuous potentials, we obtain the general representation for the perturbation theory of the bright solitons. Importantly, we do not need to assume that the nonlinearity is small, as we perform a sort of nonlinear perturbation by allowing the zeroth-order perturbation term to be governed by a nonlinear equation. This is useful, in that it allows us to consider perturbations of bright solitons of arbitrary size. In some cases, exact solutions can be recovered, and these agree with known results from the literature. Several special cases are considered which involve confining potentials of specific relevance to BECs. We make several observations on the influence of the small potentials on the behavior of the perturbed bright solitons. The results demonstrate the difference between perturbed bright solitons in the attractive NLS and those results found in the repulsive NLS for dark solitons, as discussed by Mallory and Van Gorder, [Phys. Rev. E 88 013205 (2013)]. Extension of these results to more spatial dimensions is mentioned.

Stationary solutions for the 1+1 nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling repulsive Bose-Einstein condensates in small potentials

Stationary solutions for the 1+1 cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling repulsive Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a small potential are obtained through a form of nonlinear perturbation. In particular, for sufficiently small potentials, we determine the perturbation theory of stationary solutions, by use of an expansion in Jacobi elliptic functions. This idea was explored before in order to obtain exact solutions [Bronski, Carr, Deconinck, and Kutz, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1402 (2001)], where the potential itself was fixed to be a Jacobi elliptic function, thereby reducing the nonlinear ODE into an algebraic equation, (which could be easily solved). However, in the present paper, we outline the perturbation method for completely general potentials, assuming only that such potentials are locally small. We do not need to assume that the nonlinearity is small, as we perform a sort of nonlinear perturbation by allowing the zeroth-order perturbation term to be governed by a nonlinear equation. This allows us to consider even poorly behaved potentials, so long as they are bounded locally. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by considering a number of specific potentials: for the simplest potentials, and we recover results from the literature, while for more complicated potentials, our results are new. Dark soliton solutions are constructed explicitly for some cases, and we obtain the known one-soliton tanh-type solution in the simplest setting for the repulsive BEC. Note that we limit our results to the repulsive case; similar results can be obtained for the attractive BEC case.

Different routes from a matter wavepacket to spatiotemporal chaos

We investigate the dynamics of a quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a double-well potential with spatiotemporally modulated interaction. A variety of phenomena is identified in different frequency regimes, including the self-compression, splitting, breathing-like, and near-fidelity of the matter wavepacket, which are associated with different routes for the onset of spatiotemporal chaos. The results also reveal that chaos can retain space-inversion symmetry of the system.

Transition probability from matter-wave soliton to chaos

For a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a weak traveling optical superlattice, it is demonstrated that under a stochastic initial set and in a given parameter region, the solitonic chaos appears with a certain probability. Effects of the lattice depths and wave vectors on the chaos probability are investigated analytically and numerically and different chaotic regions associated with different chaos probabilities are found. The results suggest a method for weakening or strengthening chaos by modulating the moving superlattice.

Discrete chaotic states of a Bose-Einstein condensate

We examine spatial chaos in a one-dimensional attractive Bose-Einstein condensate interacting with a Gaussian-like laser barrier and perturbed by a weak optical lattice. For a low laser barrier, chaotic regions of the parameters are demonstrated and the chaotic and regular states are illustrated numerically. In the high-barrier case, bounded perturbed solutions that describe a set of discrete chaotic states are constructed for discrete barrier heights and magic numbers of condensed atoms. Chaotic density profiles are exhibited numerically for the lowest quantum number, and analytically bounded but numerically unbounded Gaussian-like configurations are confirmed. It is shown that the chaotic wave packets can be controlled experimentally by adjusting the laser barrier potential.

Controlling chaos of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a moving optical Fourier-synthesized lattice

We study the chaotic properties of steady-state traveling-wave solutions of the particle number density of a Bose-Einstein condensate with an attractive interatomic interaction loaded into a traveling optical lattice of variable shape. We demonstrate theoretically and numerically that chaotic traveling steady states can be reliably suppressed by small changes of the traveling optical lattice shape while keeping the remaining parameters constant. We find that the regularization route as the optical lattice shape is continuously varied is fairly rich, including crisis phenomena and period-doubling bifurcations. The conditions for a possible experimental realization of the control method are discussed.

Ground-state properties of small-size nonlinear dynamical lattices

We investigate the ground state of a system of interacting particles in small nonlinear lattices with M >or=3 sites, using as a prototypical example the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation that has been recently used extensively in the contexts of nonlinear optics of waveguide arrays and Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices. We find that, in the presence of attractive interactions, the dynamical scenario relevant to the ground-state and the lowest-energy modes of such few-site nonlinear lattices reveals a variety of nontrivial features that are absent in the large/infinite lattice limits: the single-pulse solution and the uniform solution are found to coexist in a finite range of the lattice intersite coupling where, depending on the latter, one of them represents the ground state; in addition, the single-pulse mode does not even exist beyond a critical parametric threshold. Finally, the onset of the ground-state (modulational) instability appears to be intimately connected with a nonstandard ("double transcritical") type of bifurcation that, to the best of our knowledge, has not been reported previously in other physical systems.

Dynamic chaos and stability of a weakly open Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well trap

We investigate the dynamics of a weakly open Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interaction in a magneto-optical double-well trap. A set of time-dependent ordinary differential equations describing the complex dynamics are derived by using a two-mode approximation. The stability of the stationary solution is analyzed and some stability regions on the parameter space are displayed. In the symmetric well case, the numerical calculations reveal that by adjusting the feeding from the nonequilibrium thermal cloud or the two-body dissipation rate, the system could transit among the periodic motions, chaotic self-trapping states of the Lorenz model, and the steady states with the zero relative atomic population or with the macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST). In the asymmetric well case, we find the periodic orbit being a stable two-sided limited cycle with MQST. The results are in good agreement with that of the direct numerical simulations to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.

Controlling chaos in a weakly coupled array of Bose-Einstein condensates

The spatial structure of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into an optical lattice potential is investigated and the spatially chaotic distributions of the condensates are revealed under the tight-binding approximation. Adding a laser pulse on a proper site of the lattice and treating it as a control signal, control of the chaos in the system is carried out by using the Ott-Grebogi-Yorker scheme. For an appropriate laser pulse, we can suppress the chaos and push the system onto a stable manifold of a target orbit. After the control, a regular distribution, which may be expected in experiments or practical applications, of the condensates in the coordinate space is obtained.