title: Transitions from order to disorder in multiple dark and multiple dark-bright soliton atomic clouds.
abstract: We have performed a systematic study quantifying the variation of solitary wave behavior from that of an ordered cloud resembling a "crystalline" configuration to that of a disordered state that can be characterized as a soliton "gas." As our illustrative examples, we use both one-component, as well as two-component, one-dimensional atomic gases very close to zero temperature, where in the presence of repulsive interatomic interactions and of a parabolic trap, a cloud of dark (dark-bright) solitons can form in the one- (two-) component system. We corroborate our findings through three distinct types of approaches, namely a Gross-Pitaevskii type of partial differential equation, particle-based ordinary differential equations describing the soliton dynamical system, and Monte Carlo simulations for the particle system. We define an "empirical" order parameter to characterize the order of the soliton lattices and study how this changes as a function of the strength of the "thermally" (i.e., kinetically) induced perturbations. As may be anticipated by the one-dimensional nature of our system, the transition from order to disorder is gradual without, apparently, a genuine phase transition ensuing in the intermediate regime.
authors: Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA.
authors: Wenlong
authors: W
authors: Wang
authors: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003-4515, USA and Center for Nonlinear Studies and Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544, USA.
authors: P G
authors: PG
authors: Kevrekidis