title: Stable Solitons in Three Dimensional Free Space without the Ground State: Self-Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates with Spin-Orbit Coupling.
abstract: By means of variational methods and systematic numerical analysis, we demonstrate the existence of metastable solitons in three dimensional (3D) free space, in the context of binary atomic condensates combining contact self-attraction and spin-orbit coupling, which can be engineered by available experimental techniques. Depending on the relative strength of the intra- and intercomponent attraction, the stable solitons feature a semivortex or mixed-mode structure. In spite of the fact that the local cubic self-attraction gives rise to the supercritical collapse in 3D, and hence the setting produces no true ground state, the solitons are stable against small perturbations, motion, and collisions.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Yong-Chang
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Zheng-Wei
authors.initials: ZW
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Electronics, School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Boris A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Malomed
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Rice Center for Quantum Materials, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.|Center for Cold Atom Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China.
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Pu