A study of one-dimensional transport of Bose–Einstein condensates using exterior complex scaling

Abstract

We numerically investigate the one-dimensional transport of Bose–Einstein condensates in the context of guided atom lasers using a mean-field description of the condensate in terms of a spatially discretized Gross–Pitaevskii equation. We specifically consider a waveguide configuration in which spatial inhomogeneities and nonvanishing atom–atom interactions are restricted to a spatially localized scattering region of finite extent. We show how the method of smooth exterior complex scaling can be implemented for this particular configuration in order to efficiently absorb the outgoing flux within the waveguide. A numerical comparison with the introduction of a complex absorbing potential as well as with the analytically exact elimination of the dynamics of the free non-interacting motion outside the scattering region, giving rise to transparent boundary conditions, clearly confirms the accuracy and efficiency of the smooth exterior complex scaling method.