Dynamics of solitary waves in ultracold gases in terms of observable quantities

Abstract

A variety of solitary waves, such as solitons, vortex rings, solitonic vortices, and more complex entities, have recently been predicted to exist. They can move in superfluid ultracold gases along elongated traps. The theoretical description of this motion requires knowledge of the inertial soliton mass and the effective number of particles in it as functions of the soliton energy. While these functions can be calculated by a microscopic theory, it is also possible to express them directly in terms of observable quantities, such as the order parameter phase jump and the particle number deficiency in the soliton. In this article, the corresponding equations are derived in a simple and physically clear way and applied to the recently predicted ‘magnetic soliton’ in mixtures of Bose gases in various spin states.