Coherent impurity transport in an attractive binary Bose–Einstein condensate

Abstract

Abstract We study the dynamics of a soliton-impurity system modeled in terms of a binary Bose–Einstein condensate. This is achieved by ‘switching off’ one of the two self-interaction scattering lengths, giving a two component system where the second component is trapped entirely by the presence of the first component. It is shown that this system possesses rich dynamics, including the identification of unusual ‘weak’ dimers that appear close to the zero inter-component scattering length. It is further found that this system supports quasi-stable trimers in regimes where the equivalent single-component gas does not, which is attributed to the presence of the impurity atoms which can dynamically tunnel between the solitons, and maintain the required phase differences that support the trimer state.