Controlling the motion of dark solitons by means of periodic potentials: application to Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices

Dark solitons with Majorana fermions in spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases

We show that a single dark soliton can exist in a spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gas with a high spin imbalance, where spin-orbit coupling favors uniform superfluids over nonuniform Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov states, leading to dark soliton excitations in highly imbalanced gases. Above a critical spin imbalance, two topological Majorana fermions without interactions can coexist inside a dark soliton, paving a way for manipulating Majorana fermions through controlling solitons. At the topological transition point, the atom density contrast across the soliton suddenly vanishes, suggesting a signature for identifying topological solitons.

Analytical solitary-wave solutions of the generalized nonautonomous cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with different external potentials

A large family of analytical solitary wave solutions to the generalized nonautonomous cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with time- and space-dependent distributed coefficients and external potentials are obtained by using a similarity transformation technique. We use the cubic nonlinearity as an independent parameter function, where a simple procedure is established to obtain different classes of potentials and solutions. The solutions exist under certain conditions and impose constraints on the coefficients depicting dispersion, cubic and quintic nonlinearities, and gain (or loss). We investigate the space-quadratic potential, optical lattice potential, flying bird potential, and potential barrier (well). Some interesting periodic solitary wave solutions corresponding to these potentials are then studied. Also, properties of a few solutions and physical applications of interest to the field are discussed. Finally, the stability of the solitary wave solutions under slight disturbance of the constraint conditions and initial perturbation of white noise is discussed numerically; the results reveal that the solitary waves can propagate in a stable way under slight disturbance of the constraint conditions and the initial perturbation of white noise.

Localized gap-soliton trains of Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice

We develop a systematic analytical approach to study the linear and nonlinear solitary excitations of quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in an optical lattice. For the linear case, the Bloch wave in the nth energy band is a linear superposition of Mathieu's functions ce_{n-1} and se_{n} ; and the Bloch wave in the nth band gap is a linear superposition of ce_{n} and se_{n} . For the nonlinear case, only solitons inside the band gaps are likely to be generated and there are two types of solitons-fundamental solitons (which is a localized and stable state) and subfundamental solitons (which is a localized but unstable state). In addition, we find that the pinning position and the amplitude of the fundamental soliton in the lattice can be controlled by adjusting both the lattice depth and spacing. Our numerical results on fundamental solitons are in quantitative agreement with those of the experimental observation [B. Eiermann, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 230401 (2004)]. Furthermore, we predict that a localized gap-soliton train consisting of several fundamental solitons can be realized by increasing the length of the condensate in currently experimental conditions.