Soliton collisions in spin–orbit coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates

Abstract

Abstract We investigate analytically the effects of spin–orbit coupling (SOC) for the dynamics of soliton collisions in spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs). Applying the non-standard Hirota’s bilinear method, we derive some exact one- and two-soliton solutions for the one-dimensional system of a spin–orbit coupled spin-1 BEC, which clearly shows how the dynamics of the solitons in spinor BECs can be engineered by SOC. Under SOC, the soliton collisions of ferromagnetic-polar type, ferromagnetic-ferromagnetic type and polar-polar type are discussed in details. Comparisons for the soliton states between the systems with and without SOC are displayed, a remarkable phenomenon is that the SOC can lead to the split of a soliton.