Quantum dark soliton: Nonperturbative diffusion of phase and position

Abstract

The dark soliton solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in one dimension has two parameters that do not change the energy of the solution: the global phase of the condensate wave function and the position of the soliton. These degeneracies appear in the Bogoliubov theory as Bogoliubov modes with zero frequencies and zero norms. These ``zero modes'' cannot be quantized as the usual Bogoliubov quasiparticle harmonic oscillators. They must be treated in a non-perturbative way. In this paper I develop non-perturbative theory of zero modes. This theory provides non-perturbative description of quantum phase diffusion and quantum diffusion of soliton position. An initially well localized wave packet for soliton position is predicted to disperse beyond the width of the soliton.