Hamburg 2009 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 15: Poster I

A 15.45: Poster

Dienstag, 3. März 2009, 16:30–19:00, VMP 9 Poster

Experimental observation of oscillating and interacting matter wave dark solitons — •A Weller¹, J. P. Ronzheimer¹, C. Gross¹, J. Esteve¹, E. Nicklas¹, T. Zibold¹, M. K. Oberthaler¹, D. J. Frantzeskakis², G. Theocharis³, and P. G. Kevrekidis³ — ¹Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, University of Heidelberg, INF 227, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany — ²Department of Physics, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis, Zografos, Athens 157 84, Greece — ³Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Massachusetts 01003-4515, USA

We create pairs of stable dark solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate by means of an interference method. In contrast to the early dark soliton experiments our setup is in the crossover regime between 1D and 3D which enables us to overcome the so called snaking instability. Therefore the created solitons are long-lived which allows the observation of their oscillations for several periods and the determination of their frequencies. During their evolution in the trap the solitons undergo multiple collisions which lead, due to their repulsive interaction, to a measureable increase in the oscillation frequency. Our results are in quantitative agreement with simulations of the Gross-Pitaevski equation and predictions on the basis of effective inter-soliton interaction.

How the interference method can be used to generate single and three solitons will also be presented.