Ferrodark soliton collisions: Breather formation, pair reproduction, and spin-mass separation

Abstract

We study collisions between a ferrodark soliton (FDS) and an antiFDS ($\mathbb{Z}_2$ kinks in the spin order) in the easy-plane phase of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). For a type-I pair (type-I FDS-antiFDS pair) at low incoming velocities, the pair annihilates followed by the formation of an extremely long-lived dissipative breather on a stable background, a spatially localized wave packet with out-of-phase oscillating magnetization and mass superfluid densities. Periodic emissions of spin and density waves cause breather energy dissipation and we find that the breather energy decays logarithmically in time. When the incoming velocity is larger than a critical velocity at which a stationary FDS-antiFDS pair forms, a pair with finite separating velocity is reproduced. When approaching the critical velocity from below, we find that the lifetime of the stationary type-I pair shows a power-law divergence, resembling a critical behavior. In contrast, a type-II pair (type-II FDS-antiFDS pair) never annihilates and only exhibits reflection. For collisions of a mixed type FDS-antiFDS pair, as $\mathbb{Z}_2$ kinks in the spin order, reflection occurs in the topological structure of the magnetization while the mass superfluid density profiles pass through each other, manifesting spin-mass separation.