- Open Access
Stable three-dimensional solitons in spin-orbit-coupled atomic-molecular condensates
Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033278 – Published 4 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zm5l-1q4w
Abstract
We elaborate a mechanism for the creation of stable three-dimensional (3D) solitons in spin-orbit-coupled (SOC) atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, modeled by the mean-field equations with the quadratic three-wave interaction, characterized by mismatch . The planar (effectively two-dimensional) SOC is applied to the soliton’s atomic component, structuring it as a mixed mode (MM) or semivortex (SV). The molecular component of the SV soliton is shaped as a 3D vortex, while the molecular component in the MM soliton is an MM too. The solitons exist up to a critical value of . The system demonstrates a relatively large norm share of the vortex components, exceeding of the total norm, which is an essential feature of SOC-supported solitons. This is a scheme for realizing stable vortex solitons in free space with the quadratic nonlinearity.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (76)
- F. C. Zumsteg, J. D. Bierlein, and T. E. Gier, : A new nonlinear optical material, J. Appl. Phys. 47, 4980 (1976).
- C. T. Chen, B. C. Wu, A. D. Jiang, and G. M. You, A new-type ultraviolet SHG crystal-, Sci. Sin. B 28, 235 (1985).
- M. M. Fejer, G. A. Magel, D. H. Jundt, and R. L. Byer, Quasi-phase-matched second harmonic generation: tuning and tolerances, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 28, 2631 (1992).
- R. A. Duine and H. T. C. Stoof, Atom-molecule coherence in Bose gases, Phys. Rep. 396, 115 (2004).
- T. Köhlerand, K. Góral, and P. S. Julienne, Production of cold molecules via magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances, Rev. Mod. Phys. 78, 1311 (2006).
- W. E. Torruellas, Z. Wang, D. J. Hagan, E. W. VanStryland, G. I. Stegeman, L. Torner, and C. R. Menyuk, Observation of two-dimensional spatial solitary waves in a quadratic medium, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 5036 (1995).
- W. E. Torruellas, Z. Wang, L. Torner, and G. I. Stegeman, Observation of mutual trapping and dragging of two-dimensional spatial solitary waves in a quadratic medium, Opt. Lett. 20, 1949 (1995).
- A. A. Kanashov and A. M. Rubenchik, On diffraction and dispersion effect on three wave interaction, Physica D 4, 122 (1981).
- G. I. Stegeman, D. J. Hagan, and L. Torner, Cascading phenomena and their applications to all-optical signal processing, mode-locking, pulse compression and solitons, Opt. Quantum Electron. 28, 1691 (1996).
- B. A. Malomed, P. Drummond, H. He, A. Berntson, D. Anderson, and M. Lisak. Spatio-temporal solitons in optical media with a quadratic nonlinearity, Phys. Rev. E 56, 4725 (1997).
- X. Liu, K. Beckwitt, and F. W. Wise, Two-dimensional optical spatiotemporal solitons in quadratic media, Phys. Rev. E 62, 1328 (2000).
- C. Etrich, F. Lederer, B. A. Malomed, T. Peschel, and U. Peschel, Optical solitons in media with a quadratic nonlinearity, Prog. Opt. 41, 483 (2000).
- A. V. Buryak, P. D. Trapani, D. V. Skryabin, and S. Trillo, Optical solitons due to quadratic nonlinearities: From basic physics to futuristic applications, Phys. Rep. 370, 63 (2002).
- K. Hayata and M. Koshiba, Multidimensional solitons in quadratic nonlinear media, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 3275 (1993).
- J. F. Corney and O. Bang, Solitons in quadratic nonlinear photonic crystals, Phys. Rev. E 64, 047601 (2001).
- V. Lutsky and B. A. Malomed, One- and two-dimensional solitons supported by singular modulation of quadratic nonlinearity, Phys. Rev. A 91, 023815 (2015).
- M. Colin, L. Di Menza, and L. C. Saut, Solitons in quadratic media, Nonlinearity 29, 1000 (2016).
- M. Bağci, Partially-symmetric lattice solitons in quadratic nonlinear media, Phys. Rev. A 103, 023530 (2021).
- B. Oleś and K. Sacha, Solitons in coupled atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 40, 1103 (2007).
- P. D. Drummond, K. V. Kheruntsyan, and H. He, Coherent molecular solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3055 (1998).
- T. G. Vaughan, K. V. Kheruntsyan, and P. D. Drummond, Three-dimensional solitons in coupled atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, Phys. Rev. A 70, 063611 (2004).
- B. A. Malomed, Multidimensional Solitons (AIP Publishing, Melville, NY, 2022).
- L. Allen, M. W. Beijersbergen, R. J. C. Spreeuw, and J. P. Woerdman, Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes, Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185 (1992).
- W. J. Firth and D. V. Skryabin, Optical solitons carrying orbital angular momentum, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 2450 (1997).
- I. Towers, A. V. Buryak, R. A. Sammut, and B. A. Malomed, Stable localized vortex solitons, Phys. Rev. E 63, 055601(R) (2001).
- P. di Trapani, W. Chinaglia, S. Minardi, A. Piskarskas, and G. Valiulis, Observation of quadratic optical vortex solitons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3843 (2000).
- C. Hang, V. V. Konotop, and B. A. Malomed, Gap vortex solitons in periodic media with quadratic nonlinearity, Phys. Rev. A 80, 023824 (2009).
- S. K. Adhikari, Stabilization of bright solitons and vortex solitons in a trapless three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate by temporal modulation of the scattering length, Phys. Rev. A 69, 063613 (2004).
- B. B. Baizakov, B. A. Malomed, and M. Salerno, Multidimensional solitons in a low-dimensional periodic potential, Phys. Rev. A 70, 053613 (2004).
- H. Leblond, B. A. Malomed, and D. Mihalache, Three-dimensional vortex solitons in quasi-two-dimensional lattices, Phys. Rev. E 76, 026604 (2007).
- L. Torner and D. V. Petrov, Azimuthal instabilities and self-breaking of beams into sets of solitons in bulk second-harmonic generation, Electron. Lett. 33, 608 (1997).
- D. V. Petrov, L. Torner, J. Martorell, R. Vilaseca, J. P. Torres, and C. Cojocaru, Observation of azimuthal modulational instability and formation of patterns of optical solitons in a quadratic nonlinear crystal, Opt. Lett. 23, 1444 (1998).
- X. Xu, G. Ou, Z. Chen, B. Liu, W. C. Chen, B. A. Malomed, and Y. Y. Li, Semidiscrete vortex soliton, Adv. Photonics Res. 2, 2000082 (2021).
- X. Xu, F. Zhao, Y. Zhou, B. Liu, X. D. Jiang, B. A. Malomed, and Y. Y. Li, Vortex gap solitons in spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates with competing nonlinearities, Commun. Nonlinear Sci. Numer. Simul. 117, 106930 (2023).
- D. Mihalache, D. Mazilu, L. C. Crasovan, I. Towers, B. A. Malomed, A. V. Buryak, L. Torner, and F. Lederer, Stable three-dimensional spinning optical solitons supported by competing quadratic and cubic nonlinearities, Phys. Rev. E 66, 016613 (2002).
- R. DeSalvo, D. J. Hagan, M. Sheik-Bahae, G. Stegeman, and E. W. Van Stryland, Self-focusing and self-defocusing by cascaded second-order effects in KTP, Opt. Lett. 17, 28 (1992).
- D. Mihalache, D. Mazilu, B. A. Malomed, and F. Lederer, Stable vortex solitons supported by competing quadratic and cubic nonlinearities, Phys. Rev. E 69, 066614 (2004).
- T. J. Alexander, E. A. Ostrovskaya, Y. S. Kivshar, and P. S Julienne, Vortices in atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, J. Phys. B 4, S33 (2002).
- E. M. Wright, B. L. Lawrence, W. Torruellas, and G. Stegeman, Stable self-trapping and ring formation in polydiacetylene para-toluene sulfonate, Opt. Lett. 20, 2481 (1995).
- M. Quiroga-Teixeiro and H. Michinel, Stable azimuthal stationary state in quintic nonlinear optical media, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 14, 2004 (1997).
- V. I. Berezhiani, V. Skarka, and N. B. Aleksić, Dynamics of localized and nonlocalized optical vortex solitons in cubic-quintic nonlinear media, Phys. Rev. E 64, 057601 (2001).
- D. Mihalache, D. Mazilu, L.-C. Crasovan, I. Towers, A. V. Buryak, B. A. Malomed, L. Torner, J. P. Torres, and F. Lederer, Stable spinning optical solitons in three dimensions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 073902 (2002).
- R. L. Pego and H. A. Warchall, Spectrally stable encapsulated vortices for nonlinear Schrödinger equations, J. Nonlinear Sci. 12, 347 (2002).
- D. Mihalache, D. Mazilu, F. Lederer, Y. V. Kartashov, L.-C. Crasovan, L. Torner, and B. A. Malomed, Stable vortex tori in the three-dimensional cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 073904 (2006).
- C. Cartes, J. Cisternas, O. Descalzi, and H. R. Brand, Model of a two-dimensional extended chaotic system: Evidence of diffusing dissipative solitons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 178303 (2012).
- Y. Y. Wang, L. Chen, C. Q. Dai, J. Zheng, and Y. Fan, Exact vector multipole and vortex solitons in the media with spatially modulated cubic-quintic nonlinearity, Nonlinear Dyn. 90, 1269 (2017).
- I. Ferrier-Barbu, H. Kadau, M. Schmitt, M. Wenzel, and T. Pfau, Observation of quantum droplets in a strongly dipolar Bose gas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 215301 (2016).
- C. R. Cabrera, L. Tanzi, J. Sanz, B. Naylor, P. Thomas, P. Cheiney, and L. Tarruell, Quantum liquid droplets in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates, Science 359, 301 (2018).
- Z. Zhao, G. Chen, B. Liu, and Y. Li, Discrete vortex quantum droplets, Chaos Solit. Fractals 162, 112481 (2022).
- Z. Luo, W. Pang, B. Liu, Y. Li, and B. A. Malomed, A new form of liquid matter: Quantum droplets, Front. Phys. 16, 32201 (2021).
- T. A. Yoğurt, U. Tanyeri, A. Keleş, and M. Ö. Oktel, Vortex lattices in strongly confined quantum droplets, Phys. Rev. A 108, 033315 (2023).
- Y. Nie, J-H. Zheng, and T. Yang, Spectra and dynamics of quantum droplets in an optical lattice, Phys. Rev. A 108, 053310 (2023).
- L-J. He, B. Liu, and Y-C. Zhang, Quantum droplets in dipolar condensate mixtures with arbitrary dipole orientations, Phys. Rev. A 110, 013308 (2024).
- Y. V. Kartashov, B. A. Malomed, L. Tarruell, and L. Torner, Three-dimensional droplets of swirling superfluids, Phys. Rev. A 98, 013612 (2018).
- Y. Li, Z. Chen, Z. Luo, C. Huang, H. Tan, W. Pang, and B. A. Malomed, Two-dimensional vortex quantum droplets, Phys. Rev. A 98, 063602 (2018).
- X. Zhang, X. Xu, Y. Zheng, Z. Chen, B. Liu, C. Huang, B. A. Malomed, and Y. Li, Semidiscrete quantum droplets and vortices, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 133901 (2019).
- V. E. Lobanov, A. A. Kalinovich, O. V. Borovkova, and B. A. Malomed, Fundamental and vortex dissipative quadratic solitons supported by spatially localized gain, Phys. Rev. A 105, 013519 (2022).
- F. Zhao, X. Xu, H. He, L. Zhang, Y. Zhou, Z. Chen, and B. A. Malomed, Y. Li, Vortex solitons in quasi-phase-matched photonic crystals, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 157203 (2023).
- C. Kong, J. Li, X. Tang, X. Li, J. Jiao, J. Cao, and H. Deng, Composite solitary vortices of three-wave mixing in quasi-phase-matched photonic crystals, Chaos Solit. Fractals 187, 115358 (2024).
- V. Hnizdo, Spin–orbit coupling and the conservation of angular momentum, Eur. J. Phys. 33, 407 (2012).
- H. Sakaguchi and B. A. Malomed, Rotating nonlinear states in trapped binary Bose-Einstein condensates under the action of the spin-orbit coupling, Phys. Scr. 99, 125276 (2024).
- W. J. Thompson, Angular Momentum: An Illustrated Guide to Rotational Symmetries for Physical Systems (Wiley-VCH, Hoboken, NJ, 1994), Vol. 1.
- H. Sakaguchi, B. Li, and B. A. Malomed, Creation of two-dimensional composite solitons in spin-orbit-coupled self-attractive Bose-Einstein condensates in free space, Phys. Rev. E 89, 032920 (2014).
- Y.-C. Zhang, Z.-W. Zhou, B. A. Malomed, and H. Pu, Stable solitons in three dimensional free space without the ground state: Self-trapped Bose-Einstein condensates with spin-orbit coupling, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 253902 (2015).
- C. Huang, Y. Ye, S. Liu, H. He, W. Pang, B. A. Malomed, and Y. Li, Excited states of two-dimensional solitons supported by spin-orbit coupling and field-induced dipole-dipole repulsion, Phys. Rev. A 97, 013636 (2018).
- R. Zhong, Z. Chen, C. Huang, Z. Luo, H. Tan, B. A. Malomed, and Y. Li, Self-trapping under two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling and spatially growing repulsive nonlinearity, Front. Phys. 13, 130311 (2018).
- W. Z. Bao and Q. Du, Computing the ground state solution of Bose-Einstein condensates by a normalized gradient flow, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 25, 1674 (2004).
- N. G. Vakhitov and A. A. Kolokolov, Stationary solutions of the wave equation in a medium with nonlinearity saturation, Radiophys. Quantum Electron. 16, 783 (1973).
- L. Bergé, Wave collapse in physics: Principles and applications to light and plasma waves, Phys. Rep. 303, 259 (1998).
- V. E. Zakharov and E. A. Kuznetsov, Solitons and collapses: Two evolution scenarios of nonlinear wave systems, Phys.-Usp. 55, 535 (2012).
- F. Dalfovo, S. Giorgini, L. P. Pitaevskii, and S. Stringari, Theory of Bose-Einstein condensation in trapped gases, Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, 463 (1999).
- M. H. Anderson, J. R. Ensher, M. R. Matthews, C. E. Wieman, and E. A. Cornell, Observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute atomic vapor, Science 269, 198 (1995).
- Y.-J. Lin, K. Jiménez-García, and I. B. Spielman, Spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates, Nature (London) 471, 83 (2011).
- K. M. Jones, E. Tiesinga, P. D. Lett, and P. S. Julienne, Ultracold photoassociation spectroscopy: Long-range molecules and atomic scattering, Rev. Mod. Phys. 78, 483 (2006).
- C.-D. Mi, K. S. Nawaz, P.-J. Wang, L.-C. Chen, Z.-M. Meng, L. Huang, and J. Zhang, Production of dual species Bose-Einstein condensates of and , Chin. Phys. B 30, 063401 (2021).
- Y. V. Kartashov, B. A. Malomed, V. V. Konotop, V. E. Lobanov, and L. Torner, Stabilization of solitons in bulk Kerr media by dispersive coupling, Opt. Lett. 40, 1045 (2015).