Gap solitons in quasi-1D Bose–Einstein condensate with three-body interactions under PT symmetry

Abstract

Abstract The existence and stability of gap solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate with three-body interactions loaded in a PT-symmetric potential are investigated numerically. Under the mean-field approximation, the dynamical behaviors of the system are described by a cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation. Firstly, we obtained the band-gap structures via linearizing the GPE. The PT-symmetric of the system will be broken if the magnitude of the imaginary part of the external potential exceeds a critical value. Secondly, various of gap solitons were found by the Newton-Conjugate-Gradient method. Finally, the stability properties of gap solitons were investigated through the linear stability analysis and the direct long-time nonlinear dynamical evolution. The results indicated that the stability of on-site and off-site solitons was remarkably influenced by three-body interactions. There exists unstable on-site gap solitons when the PT-symmetric potential is taken into account. Additionally, the magnitude of the imaginary part of the potential also affects the profile and stability of the gap solitons. When it increases, the symmetry of the solitons will be broken.