Formation of a Matter-Wave Bright Soliton
L. Khaykovich,1
F. Schreck,1
G. Ferrari,12
T. Bourdel,1
J. Cubizolles,1
L. D. Carr,1
Y. Castin,1
C. Salomon1*
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 millimeter is observed. A simple theoretical model explains the stability region of the soliton. These
matter-wave solitons open possibilities for future applications in
coherent atom optics, atom interferometry, and atom transport.
1 Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale
Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
2 European Laboratory for Non-Linear
Spectroscopy-Istituto Nazíonale per la Fisica della Materia,
Largo E. Fermi 2, Firenze 50125, Italy.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
salomon{at}lkb.ens.fr
