Hydrodynamics of cold atomic gases in the limit of weak nonlinearity, dispersion and dissipation

Abstract

Dynamics of interacting cold atomic gases have recently become a focus of both experimental and theoretical studies. Often cold atom systems show hydrodynamic behavior and support the propagation of nonlinear dispersive waves. Although this propagation depends on many details of the system, a great insight can be obtained in the rather universal limit of weak nonlinearity, dispersion and dissipation (WNDD). In this limit, using a reductive perturbation method we map some of the hydrodynamic models relevant to cold atoms to well known chiral one-dimensional equations such as KdV, Burgers, KdV-Burgers, and Benjamin-Ono equations. These equations have been thoroughly studied in literature. The mapping gives us a simple way to make estimates for original hydrodynamic equations and to study the interplay between nonlinearity, dissipation and dispersion which are the hallmarks of nonlinear hydrodynamics.