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Motion of Ferrodark Solitons in Trapped Superfluids: Spin Corrections and Emergent Oscillators

12/03 2025 Seminar
  • Title Motion of Ferrodark Solitons in Trapped Superfluids: Spin Corrections and Emergent Oscillators
  • Speaker Xiao-Quan Yu (Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics)
  • Date 3:30 PM, Dec. 3, 2025
  • Venue Lecture Hall 6620, South Building
  • Abstract

    We propose a framework for topological soliton dynamics in trapped spinor superfluids, decomposing the force acting on the soliton by the surrounding fluid into the buoyancy force and spin corrections arising from the density depletion at soliton core and the coupling between the orbital motion and the spin mixing, respectively. Our formulation applies to large-amplitude soliton motion in general superfluids with spin degrees of freedom under arbitrary external potentials. For ferrodark solitons (FDSs) in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates, the spin correction could diverge, change the direction of the total force, and enable mapping the FDS motion in a harmonic trap to the atomic-mass particle dynamics in an emergent quartic potential. Initially placing a type-I FDS near the trap center, a single-sided oscillation happens, which maps to the particle moving around a local minimum of the emergent double-well potential. As the initial distance of a type-II FDS from the trap center increases, the motion exhibits three regimes: trap-centered harmonic and anharmonic oscillations followed by single-sided oscillations. Correspondingly the emergent quartic potential undergoes a transition from a single minimum to a double-well shape, where the particle motion shifts from oscillating around the single minimum to crossing between two minima via the local maximum, then the symmetry-breaking motion around one of the two minima. In a hard-wall trap with linear potential, the FDS motion maps to a harmonic oscillator.

    References: 

    [1] X. Yu and P. B. Blakie, Phys. Rev. Research 3, 023043, (2021).

    [2] X. Yu and P. B. Blakie, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 125301, (2022).

    [3] J. Biguo and X. Yu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 223401, (2025).

    Biography

    Xiaoquan Yu(于小泉) is an assistant professor at Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics (GSCAEP). He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics in 2012 from SISSA. From 2013-2015 he conducted postdoctoral research at New Zealand institute for advanced study. He started to work at the physics department of the University of Otago as a research fellow in 2015. In 2019 he joined GSCAEP. His research focuses on quantum fluids, vortex dynamcis, topological solitons, turbulence and disordered quantum systems. 

    Inviter: Chu-Shun Tian