On creation and evolution of dark solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

Generation of dark solitons from large initial excitations and their evolution in a quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate trapped by a harmonic potential is studied analytically and numerically. In the case of a single deep soliton main characteristics of its motion such as a frequency and amplitude of oscillations are calculated by means of the perturbation theory which in the leading order results in a Newtonian dynamics, corrections to which are computed as well. It is shown that long-time dynamics of a dark soliton in a generic situation deviates substantially from outcomes of the naive application of the Ehrenfest theorem. We also consider three different techniques of controllable creation of multi-soliton structures (soliton trains) from large initial excitations and calculate their initial parameters (depths and velocities) with the use of a generalized Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization rule. Multi-soliton effects are discussed.