Quantum Gray Solitons in Confining Potentials

Dominic C. Wadkin-Snaith, Dimitri M. Gangardt
2012 Physical Review Letters  
We define and study hole-like excitations (the Lieb II mode) in a weakly interacting Bose liquid subject to external confinement. These excitations are obtained by semiclassical quantization of gray solitons propagating on top of a Thomas-Fermi background. Radiation of phonons by an accelerated gray soliton leads to a finite life-time for the trapped Lieb II mode. It is shown that, for a large number of trapped atoms, most of the Lieb II levels can be experimentally resolved.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.108.085301 pmid:22463538 fatcat:tnotmhtgdjbjnfwtfqlgggwwpe