Photo-Solitonic Effect

Abstract

We show that dark solitons in 1D Bose liquids may be created by absorption of a single quanta of an external ac field, in a close analogy with the Einstein's photoelectric effect. Similarly to the von Lenard's experiment with photoexcited electrons, the external field's photon energy $\hbar\omega$ should exceed a certain threshold. In our case the latter is given by the soliton energy $\varepsilon_s(\hbar q)$ with the momentum $\hbar q$, where $q$ is photon's wavenumber. We find the probability of soliton creation to have a power-law dependence on the frequency detuning $\omega-\varepsilon_s/\hbar$. This dependence is a signature of the quantum nature of the absorption process and the orthogonality catastrophe phenomenon associated with it.