Quantum states of dark solitons in the 1D Bose gas

Abstract

We present a series of quantum states that are characterized by dark solitons of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (i.e. the Gross–Pitaevskii equation) for the one-dimensional Bose gas interacting through the repulsive delta-function potentials. The classical solutions satisfy the periodic boundary conditions and we simply call them classical dark solitons. Through exact solutions we show corresponding aspects between the states and the solitons in the weak coupling case: the quantum and classical density profiles completely overlap with each other not only at an initial time but also at later times over a long period of time, and they move together with the same speed in time; the matrix element of the bosonic field operator between the quantum states has exactly the same profiles of the square amplitude and the phase as the classical complex scalar field of a classical dark soliton not only at the initial time but also at later times, and the corresponding profiles move together for a long period of time. We suggest that the corresponding properties hold rigorously in the weak coupling limit. Furthermore, we argue that the lifetime of the dark soliton-like density profile in the quantum state becomes infinitely long as the coupling constant approaches zero, by comparing it with the quantum speed limit time. Thus, we call the quantum states quantum dark soliton states.