Matter-wave interactions in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

¹ School of Science, Xi'an Jiaotong University - Xi'an 710049, China
² College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Northwest Normal University - Lanzhou 730070, China

Received: 12 May 2015
Accepted: 27 July 2015

Abstract

We investigate two vector-soliton–like matter waves collisions in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive interactions and Gaussian barrier. We present a detailed numerical analysis of the roles of atomic interactions, barrier, relative velocity, and relative phase in collisional dynamics. We show that the interspecies interactions are crucial to make the wave packet propagate as a “breather”. We find that the collision-induced trajectory shifts of waves are mainly determined by the intraspecies interactions and proportional to them in the weak nonlinearity regime. Moreover, we explore the meeting time of colliding waves and find it depends on the competition between barrier potential and atomic interactions. Particularly, we study the collisions of two waves with a slight velocity asymmetry (or with different relative phases) and the waves merging and split are demonstrated. The underlying inelastic mechanism closely related to energy exchange is briefly discussed as well.