English

Formation of a Matter-Wave Bright Soliton

Condensed Matter 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

We report the production of matter-wave solitons in an ultracold lithium 7 gas. The effective interaction between atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate is tuned with a Feshbach resonance from repulsive to attractive before release in a one-dimensional optical waveguide. Propagation of the soliton without dispersion over a macroscopic distance of 1.1 mm is observed. A simple theoretical model explains the stability region of the soliton. These matter-wave solitons open fascinating possibilities for future applications in coherent atom optics, atom interferometry and atom transport.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0205378,
  title  = {Formation of a Matter-Wave Bright Soliton},
  author = {L. Khaykovich and F. Schreck and G. Ferrari and T. Bourdel and J. Cubizolles and L. D. Carr and Y. Castin and C. Salomon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0205378},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages, 5 figures