text:
# Coherent Dynamics of a Josephson Charge Qubit

## Abstract

We have fabricated a Josephson charge qubit by capacitively coupling a single-Cooper-pair box (SCB) to an electrometer based upon a single-electron transistor configured for radio-frequency readout (RF-SET). Charge quantization of $`2e`$ is observed and microwave spectroscopy is used to extract the Josephson and charging energies of the box. We perform coherent manipulation of the SCB by using very fast DC pulses and observe quantum oscillations in time of the charge that persist to $`10ns`$. The observed contrast of the oscillations is high and agrees with that expected from the finite $`E_J/E_C`$ ratio and finite rise-time of the DC pulses. In addition, we are able to demonstrate nearly $`100\%`$ initial charge state polarization. We also present a method to determine the relaxation time $`T_1`$ when it is shorter than the measurement time $`T_{meas}`$.

Although a large number of physical systems have been suggested as potential implementations of qubits, solid state systems are attractive in that they offer a realistic possibility of scaling to a large number of interacting qubits. Recently there has been considerable experimental progress using superconducting microelectronic circuits to construct artificial two-level systems. A variety of relative Josephson and Coloumb energy scales have been used to construct qubits based upon a single-Cooper-pair box Nakamura et al. (1999); Vion et al. (2002) and flux qubits based upon a 3-junction loop van der Wal et al. (2000); Chiorescu et al. (2003). Coherence times of the order of 0.5 microseconds have been achieved for a single-Cooper-pair box qubitVion et al. (2002). Rabi oscillations between energy levels of a single large tunnel junction have also been observed Yu et al. (2002); Martinis et al. (2002). Despite the encouraging results, one aspect that is not well understood concerns the contrast of the oscillations, which in all previously reported experiments is smaller than expected.

The experimental systems reported so far can also be distinguished by the readout method and the manner of performing single qubit rotations. The first demonstration of coherent control of a single-Cooper-pair box (SCB) Nakamura et al. (1999) employed a weakly coupled probe junction to determine the charge on the island. In the more recent experiment reported by Vion *et al.*Vion et al. (2002), the SCB was incorporated into a loop containing a large tunnel junction, for which the switching current depends on the state of the SCB. Switching current measurements of SQUIDS have also been used for flux and phase-type qubitsvan der Wal et al. (2000); Chiorescu et al. (2003); Yu et al. (2002); Martinis et al. (2002). Nakamura *et al.*Nakamura et al. (1999) performed single qubit rotations by applying very fast DC pulses to a gate lead in order to quickly move the SCB into, and away from the charge degeneracy point. This technique produces qubit rotations with an operation time that can be of the order of the natural oscillation period. Other experiments utilize microwave pulses to perform NMR-like rotations of the qubit Vion et al. (2002); Yu et al. (2002); Martinis et al. (2002); Chiorescu et al. (2003). The latter approach requires less stringent microwave engineering, since RF-rotations can be accomplished with pulses that are more than order of magnitude slower in rise time and duration than the natural oscillation period. By using fast pulses, however, single qubit rotations can be performed approximately 20 times faster than with RF-rotations.

In this letter, we report measurements made on a SCB-type qubit with very fast DC pulses used to effect the qubit rotations, as in Nakamura *et al.*Nakamura et al. (1999). For our qubit, however, the readout system consists of a single-electron-transistor (SET) capacitively coupled to the SCB and configured for radio-frequency readout (RF-SET). By incorporating a SET into a tank circuit, RF-SET electrometers can be made that are both fastSchoelkopf et al. (1998) and sensitiveAassime et al. (2001), and are well-suited for SCB-qubit readoutAassime et al. (2001); Lehnert et al. (2003). One advantage of using RF-SET readout is that it can easily be turned on and off, although for the measurements reported here it is operated in a continuousLehnert et al. (2003). More significanly, the RF-SET is fundamentally different from qubit readout based on swithing currents in that it involves a weak measurement of the charge in contrast to a yes or no answer. This could be a significant advantage for readout of multiple qubit systems. For example, a switching current measurement on one qubit would also directly affect the other qubits due to its strong interaction. Furthermore, switching current measurements are inherently stochastic in time—an important consideration if one is interested in measuring time correlations.

Electron beam lithography and double-angle shadow evaporation of aluminum films onto an oxidized silicon substrate were used to fabricate the combined SCB-SET system (see Fig. 1)Bladh et al. (2002). The SCB box consists of a low-capacitance superconducting island connected to a superconducting reservoir by two parallel junctions that define a low-inductance SQUID loop. An additional gate lead placed near the island is used to change the electrostatic potential of the island by a gate voltage $`V_g`$ through a gate capacitance $`C_g`$. By adjusting the magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ through the loop, the effective Josephson energy is tunable as $`E_J=E_J^{max}|cos(\pi \mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0)|`$, where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ is the magnetic flux quantum ($`h/2e`$). Coupling of the SCB to the SET was accomplished by extending part of the SET island to the proximity of the box island and resulted in a weak dimensionless coupling, $`C_I/C_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ of $`0.54\%`$ for samples with slightly different geometries and total SCB capacitances $`C_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. $`C_I`$ is the capacitance between the SCB and SET islands.

The samples were placed at the mixing chamber of a dilution refrigerator with a base temperature of approximately 20mK. An external superconducting magnet was used to produce a large field parallel to the plane of the samples and a small superconducting coil close to the sample was used to produce a field perpendicular to the SQUID loop. This allowed us to independently suppress the superconducting gap of the aluminum film, and change the effective Josephson energy of the Cooper-pair box. All control lines were filtered by a combination of low-pass and stainless steel and copper-powder filters. To present sharp pulses to the SCB gate, a high frequency coaxial line was used having $`10`$dB attenuation at $`4.2`$K and $`20`$dB at $`1.5`$K. The tank circuit had a resonant frequency of $`380`$MHz and the RF-SET electrometer was biased near a feature in the $`IV`$ versus $`V_g^{SET}`$ landscape known as the double Josephson quasi-particle peak (DJQP) Clerk et al. (2001), such that the bias current through the SET was typically 200-300pA. Under these conditions, the electrometer sensitivity for the combined SCB-SET system was found to be 50 $`\times 10^6e/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}`$ with a bandwidth of 10MHz.

To make an artificial two-level system, the energy scales of the SCB must be chosen so that $`k_BT<E_C,E_J>\mathrm{\Delta }`$, where $`E_C`$ is the energy cost required to add a single electron to the island and is set by total capacitance of the island $`E_C=e^2/2C_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. If $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is large enough compared to $`E_C`$, then the ground states will be even parity states that differ only by the average number of Cooper-pairs on the island. The effective Hamiltonian of the box, including the Josephson coupling, is given by

$$H=4E_C\underset{n}{}(nn_g)^2|nn|\frac{E_J}{2}\underset{n}{}(|n+1n|+|nn+1|),$$
(1)
where we define gate charge as $`n_g=C_gV_g/2en_0`$, and $`n_0`$ is the offset charge due to stray charges near the box. Fig. 2(a) shows the ground state and first excited state energy bands calculated using the Hamiltonian in Eqn.(1). On account of the $`2e`$ periodicity of the system, we limit the discussion to gate charge $`0n_g1`$.

In thermodynamic equilibrium, the actual quantity that determines the island parity is the even-odd free energy difference $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(T)`$, which differs from $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ due to entropic considerations.Lafarge et al. (1993). Measurements were made for several different samples with Coulomb enegies $`E_C/k_B(E_C/h)`$ ranging from 0.43 to 1.65$`K`$ (9-34GHz) and $`E_J/E_C`$ ratios of 0.4 to 2.25. Coloumb staircases were measured by slowly ramping the box gate charge (at a rate of $`40e/s`$), and measuring the power reflected from the RF-SET tank circuit. Examples of the measured box charge $`Q_{box}(n_g)`$ is shown in Fig. 2b. Our samples show $`2e`$ periodicity when $`E_c/k_B<1K`$, well below the gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }/k_B=2.2`$K. For samples with larger $`E_c`$, the staircases acquire an extra step around $`n_g=0.5`$ due to poisoning by non-equilibrium quasiparticles.

The characteristic energies $`E_C`$ and $`E_J^{max}`$ of the SCB can be determined directly using microwave spectroscopyLehnert et al. (2003). When monochromatic microwaves are applied to the SCB gate, resonant peaks and dips occur in the measured $`Q_{box}`$ vs $`n_g`$ staircase when the microwave photon energy matches the energy level splitting $`\nu _{01}`$ (see Fig. 2(b)). As the microwave frequency is reduced, the positions of these peaks exhibit an avoided level crossing. Within the two-level approximation, the positions of the single-photon resonances depend on the applied frequency $`\nu `$ as $`\mathrm{\Delta }n_g=\sqrt{h^2\nu ^2E_J^2}/8E_C,`$ where we used $`\mathrm{\Delta }n_g(n_g^{dip}n_g^{peak})/2`$. An example of such an avoided level crossing is shown in Fig 2(c) where we have used least-squares fits to this equation to estimate the Coloumb and Josephson energies.

Measurements of time-resolved, coherent oscillations of the charge on the SCB are made by slowly ramping the SCB gate charge $`n_g`$ as before, while applying fast (non-adiabatic) rectangular DC-voltage pulses of amplitude $`a`$ in the form of a pulse train to the SCB gate. When $`n_g`$ is far away from the charge degeneracy, and $`a`$ such that $`n_g+a`$ places the system at the charge degeneracy, the leading and trailing edges of each pulse act as successive Hadamard transformations. In between, the system coherently oscillates between charge eigenstates for a time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. The trailing edge of the pulse returns the gate charge to $`n_g`$ with the system in a superposition of ground and excited states corresponding to the phase of the oscillation acquired during $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. After the pulse, the excited state component decays with a relaxation time $`T_1`$. The pulses are separated by a repetition time $`T_R`$, typically greater than $`T_1`$.

Since the staircase is acquired by ramping $`n_g`$ on a timescale much slower than $`T_R`$, one measures an enhanced charge $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{box}=Q_{box}^{on}Q_{box}^{off}`$, that is time-averaged over the pulse train and proportional to the probability of finding the system in the excited state. Peaks in $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{box}`$ vs $`n_g`$ will be located at gate charges $`n_g^{peak}`$ such that approximately a half-integer number of oscillations occur at gate charge $`n_g^{peak}+a`$ during the time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. Fig. 2(b) (bottom curve) shows a measured staircase using such a pulse train. When one measures such staircases for varying $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, then time-domain oscillations are evident in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ cross-sections of $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{box}`$ vs $`n_g`$. This is shown in Fig. 4(a), where we plot the time evolution near the charge degeneracy point. As $`T_R`$ is increased, the pulse-induced charge contributes less to the time average. A simple calculation which ignores coherence effects remaining after a time $`T_R`$ leads to the dependence

$$\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{box}(T_R)=2n_0\frac{T_1}{T_R}\frac{1e^{T_R/T_1}}{1+e^{T_R/T_1}},$$
(2)
where $`n_0`$ is the initial peak amplitude. One can estimate $`T_1`$ at the readout gate voltage by measuring the dependence of the peak amplitude on $`T_R`$ and fitting the data to this formula.

Using such a pulse-train allows a measurement of the excited state probability even when the relaxation time $`T_1`$ is shorter than the measurement time. Population averaging and mixing limit the maximum observed amplitude of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{box}`$ oscillations to $`1e`$ rather than $`2e`$, and this occurs only for an ideal rectangular pulse, short repetition times and vanishing $`E_J/E_C`$ ratio. We have numerically integrated the Schrödinger equation using pulses with a finite risetime to study the various factors affecting both the contrast of the oscillations and the degree of charge state polarization. The results are best understood when plotted on the Bloch sphere as shown in Fig. 3. The dash-dotted lines show the evolution in time of the state vector starting from an initial condition (upward pointing arrows) and evolving through a maximum polarization of the charge state (downward arrows). The initial state differs from pure $`\text{S}_z`$ due to a finite $`E_J/E_C`$. Fig. 3(a) shows evolution for a pulse that takes the system to the charge degeneracy. One finds that a finite pulse rise-time mimics a higher $`E_J/E_C`$ ratio and reduces the oscillation contrast. Nonetheless, Fig. 3(b) shows that by pulsing past the charge degeneracy, one can achieve nearly $`100\%`$ polarization.

Measurements of the $`T_R`$ dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_{box}`$ are shown in Fig. 4(b), where we have used an appropriate pulse amplitude and duration to achieve nearly $`100\%`$ initial polarization. We find $`T_1=108\pm 20`$ns at the readout point $`n_g0.25`$ using a least-squares fit to Eqn.(2). The data of Fig. 4(a) shows an oscillation contrast of approximately $`0.55e`$. Taking in to account the experimentally determined $`E_J/E_C`$ and $`T_1/T_R`$, along with the measured risetime $`\delta t35`$ps of our pulse generator (Anritsu MP1763C), we find good agreement between the observed and expected initial oscillation contrast. Numerical solutions of Schrödinger equation show that the reduction of contrast due to the pulse risetime depends strongly on $`E_J`$. This was checked experimentally by varying $`E_J`$ and found to be in agreement with the calculations. A fit of the data of Fig. 4(a) to an exponentially decaying sinusoid gives a oscillation frequency $`\nu _0=3.6`$GHz and decoherence time of 2.9ns.

Using fast DC pulse trains, we were able to observe oscillations in time out to 10ns. The dependence of decoherence time on gate charge at the top of the pulse is shown in Fig. 4(c) and has a sharp maximum at the charge degeneracy. This tells us that low frequency charge noise is the dominant source of dephasing in our qubit. As discussed and demonstrated by Vion *et al.*Vion et al. (2002), dephasing due to charge fluctuations is minimum at the charge degeneracy. The coherence time found by Vion *et al.* is much larger than that found in our measurements although their initial oscillation amplitude is much smaller. If we extrapolate the gate charge dependence of $`T_1`$ (not shown) to the charge degeneracy, we expect $`T_110`$ns. This implies that the decoherence time we measure at the charge degeneracy is dominated by the short relaxation time rather than pure dephasing.

Our measured $`T_1`$ was also found to be independent of SET bias current in the sub-gap regime. Previously, a considerably larger $`T_1`$ was measured in a similar sample using a spectroscopic techniqueLehnert et al. (2003), and found to agree with the theoretical $`T_11\mu s`$ expected from quantum fluctuations of a $`50\mathrm{\Omega }`$ environment. The reduced $`T_1`$ observed here could be attributed to several factors. One is coupling to the relatively unfiltered high frequency coaxial line, in addition to unwanted coupling to other metal traces and the microwave environment of our sample. In practice it is difficult to estimate the actual real part of the impedance on these leads at such high transition frequencies. Another possibility concerns quasiparticles. Our samples were fabricated without quasiparticle traps and despite the observed static $`2e`$-periodicity, there could be considerable non-equilibrium quasiparticle dynamics occuring on these time scales. Finally, it may be that the use of fast DC pulses leaves the bath of charge fluctuators in a configuration having additional channels for relaxtion of the qubit. Clearly what is needed is $`T_1`$ measurements using a variety of techniues—RF-rotations, spectroscopy, as well as fast DC-pulse—on the same sample.

In conclusion, we have fabricated and measured a solid state qubit based upon a SCB combined with a RF-SET readout system. Due to a relatively short $`T_1`$, continuous measurement of the SCB was employed. Fast DC pulses were used to coherently manipulate the qubit and time-coherent oscillations of the charge were observed. The initial contrast of the oscillations is relatively large and quantitatively understood as due to finite $`E_J/E_C`$ combined with the finite pulse risetime. Furthermore, nearly $`100\%`$ charge state polarization can be achieved. The oscillations show a maximum decoherence time at the charge degeneracy which indicates that charge fluctuations dominate the dephasing rate.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to acknowledge fruitful discussions with R. Schoelkopf, K. Lehnert, A. Wallraff, G. Johansson, A Käck, G. Wendin and Y. Nakamura. The samples were made at the MC2 cleanroom. The work was supported by the Swedish SSF and VR, by the Wallenberg and Göran Gustafsson foundations and by the EU under the IST-SQUBIT programme.


format: text

text:
# Solitary-waves of the Nonpolynomial Schrodinger Equation: Bright Solitons in Bose-Einstein Condensates

## I Introduction

A nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nonpolynomial nonlinearity, the so-called nonpolynomial Schrödinger equation (NPSE), has been recently introduced and studied \[1-3\]. This equation has been derived in the context of Bose-Einstein condensation  from the 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation  as a reliable effective 1D equation which describes the axial wavefunction $`\psi (x,t)`$ of a cigar-shaped condensate confined in the transverse direction $`(y,z)`$ by a harmonic trapping potential. NPSE has been successfully used to numerically investigate  the dynamics of Bose condensate solitary-waves experimentally observed by two groups . In this letter we rigorously determine the linear stability domain of the solitary-wave solutions of NPSE by using the Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion . In particular, we find that NPSE admits both stable and unstable stationary solitary-wave solutions.

## II Generalized Schrödinger Equations

For the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation (GNLSE), given by

$$\left[i\frac{}{t}+\frac{1}{2}\frac{^2}{x^2}+F(|\psi |^2)\right]\psi =0,$$
(1)
where $`F(|\psi |^2)`$ is the nonlinear term, the linear stability of solitary-waves is determined by the Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion \[11-13\]. With the standard position

$$\psi (x,t)=\varphi (x)e^{i\omega t},$$
(2)
where $`\omega `$ is the frequency of the fase and $`\varphi (x)`$ is a real scalar field, from GNLSE one obtains the stationary second-order differential equation

$$\left[\frac{1}{2}\frac{d^2}{dx^2}+F(\varphi ^2)\right]\varphi =\omega \varphi .$$
(3)
The first derivative $`N_s^{}(\omega )`$ of the number of particles invariant

$$N_s(\omega )=𝑑x\varphi ^2(x),$$
(4)
calculated for the soliton solution $`\varphi (x)`$, allows one to predict the parameter region in $`\omega `$ where the soliton amplitude can grow or decay exponentially with a nonzero growth rate. The solitons are stable if $`N_s^{}(\omega )>0`$ and unstable if $`N_s^{}(\omega )<0`$ .

## III Nonpolynomial Schrödinger equation

In the case of the self-focusing nonpolynomial Schrödiger equation (NPSE) \[1-3\] the nonlinearity of Eq. (1) and Eq. (3) is given by

$$F(\varphi ^2)=\frac{g\varphi ^2}{\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}}\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}}+\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}\right),$$
(5)
where $`g`$ is the strength of the attractive interaction between particles in the Bose-Einstein condensate. In particular, the parameter $`g`$ is related to the s-wave scattering length $`a_s`$ and to the characteristic length $`a_{}`$ of the transverse harmonic confinement by $`g=2|a_s|/a_{}`$ \[1-3,8\].

Given a GNLSE like Eq. (3) it is quite natural to try a power expansion of $`F(\varphi ^2)`$. In the case of NPSE one finds

$$F(\varphi ^2)=1+g\varphi ^2+\frac{3}{8}g^2\varphi ^4+\mathrm{}.$$
(6)
The lowest order in $`g\varphi ^2`$ gives the familiar one-dimensional self-focusing cubic NLSE. By including the next term of the power expansion one has a cubic-quintic NLSE, which has been investigated in several papers (see for instance ). But, as we shall show, the cubic-quintic approximation of NPSE is not able to correctly describe the stability of NPSE solitary waves.

The exact stationary solitary-wave solutions of NPSE can be obtained in the following way. A simple constant of motion of the stationary NPSE is

$$E=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{d\varphi }{dx}\right)^2+V(\varphi ),$$
(7)
where

$$V(\varphi )=\omega \varphi ^2\varphi ^2\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}$$
(8)
is the effective potential energy of the system. In Figure 1 we plot the potential energy $`V(\varphi )`$ of the full NPSE and its cubic and cubic-quintic approximations. As shown by Figure 1, for $`\omega <0`$ $`V(\varphi )`$ is a double-well potential and the two approximations are quite close to the exact curve, apart near $`\varphi =\pm 1/\sqrt{g}`$, the end-points of the NPSE which are related to the the singularity of the term $`(1g\varphi ^2)^{1/2}`$. By imposing the boundary condition $`\varphi 0`$ for $`x\mathrm{}`$ one finds $`E=0`$ and so

$$\frac{d\varphi }{dx}=\sqrt{2\varphi ^2\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}+2\omega \varphi ^2}.$$
(9)
The previous formula gives the integral equation

$$𝑑x=𝑑\varphi \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\varphi ^2\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}+2\omega \varphi ^2}},$$
(10)
from which one obtains the solitary-wave solution $`\varphi (x)`$ written in implicit form (see also )

$$\sqrt{2}x=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\omega }}arcth\left[\sqrt{\frac{\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}+\omega }{1+\omega }}\right]\frac{1}{\sqrt{1\omega }}arctg\left[\sqrt{\frac{\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}+\omega }{1\omega }}\right].$$
(11)
## IV Vakhitov-Kolokolov stability criterion

The number of particles $`N_s(\omega )`$ of Eq. (4) can be calculated by observing that

$$dx=d\varphi \left(\frac{d\varphi }{dx}\right)^1,$$
(12)
from which one gets

$$N_s(\omega )=𝑑\varphi \frac{\varphi }{\sqrt{2\sqrt{1g\varphi ^2}+2\omega }}.$$
(13)
This integral is analytically solvable and one obtains

$$N_s(\omega )=\frac{2\sqrt{2}}{3g}\left(12\omega \right)\sqrt{1+\omega }.$$
(14)
In Figure 2 we plot the function $`N_s(\omega )`$ for some values of the nonlinear strength $`g`$. The Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion  is based on the study of the sign of the first derivative

$$N_s^{}(\omega )=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{g}\frac{(1+2\omega )}{\sqrt{1+\omega }}$$
(15)
of the number of particle $`N_s(\omega )`$. One easly finds that the solitary-wave $`\varphi (x)`$ given by Eq. (11) is linearly stable for $`1<\omega <1/2`$ and unstable for $`1/2<\omega <1/2`$. Moreover $`N_s(\omega )`$ has its maximum value $`N_s^{max}=4/(3g)`$ at the critical frequency $`\omega =1/2`$.

In Figure 2 we also plot $`N_s(\omega )`$ obtained from the cubic NLSE and the cubic-quintic NLSE. In the case of cubic NLSE one finds

$$N_s(\omega )=\frac{2\sqrt{2}}{g}\sqrt{1+\omega },$$
(16)
from which one immediately obtains that the solitary-wave solutions are always stable. In the case of the cubic-quintic NLSE the number of particles is instead given by

$$N_s(\omega )=\frac{2}{g}\left(\frac{\pi }{2}arctg\left[\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2\sqrt{1+\omega }}\right]\right).$$
(17)
Remarkably also in this case the Vakhitov-Kolokolov stability criterion tells us that there are no unstable solitary-waves. Thus the quintic term in the power expansion of NPSE is not sufficient to determine the stability domain of NPSE.

As previously stated, in the context of Bose-Einstein condensation \[1-3\] the nonlinear strength $`g`$ is given by $`g=2|a_s|/a_{}`$. By using this expression one finds that the maximum value of $`N_s(\omega )`$ for the full NPSE is given by

$$N_s^{max}=\frac{2}{3}\frac{a_{}}{|a_s|}.$$
(18)
This value is very close to the critical number $`N_c`$ of attractive Bose-condensed atoms under transverse harmonic confinement found in  with a full numerical solution of the 3D GPE:

$$N_c=0.676\frac{a_{}}{|a_s|}.$$
(19)
Beyond $`N_c`$ there is the so-called collapse of the Bose-Einstein condensate. The collapse is due to the fact that the solitary-wave solution becomes linearly unstable, i.e. $`N_s(\omega )<0`$ in our NPSE. Note that this collapse has nothing to do with the singularity of the term $`(1g\varphi ^2)^{1/2}`$ that is present in NPSE: in fact, also at the collapse the condition $`g\varphi ^2<1`$ is satisfied.

## V Modulational instability

In a recent experiment  it has been reported the formation of bright solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate of 7Li atoms induced by a sudden change in the sign of the scattering length from positive to negative. The formation of these solitons can be explained as due to the modulational instability of the time-dependent wave function of the Bose condensate, driven by imaginary Bogoliubov excitations .

Let us consider a Bose condensate with a repulsive inter-atomic interaction ($`a_s>0`$). The condensate is described by Eq. (1) and Eq. (5), setting $`g^{}=g`$ instead of $`g`$ in Eq. (5). Under box axial confinement, the stationary homogeneous wave function is given by

$$\varphi (x)=\sqrt{\frac{N}{L}}$$
(20)
for $`L/2<x<L/2`$ and zero elsewhere. $`L`$ is the size of the confining box and $`N`$ the total number of bosons. The Bogoliubov elementary excitations $`ϵ_k`$ of the static Bose condensate $`\varphi (x)`$ are found by looking for solutions of the form

$$\psi (x,t)=e^{i\omega t}\left[\varphi (x)+u_k(x)e^{iϵ_kt}+v_k^{}(x)e^{iϵ_kt}\right],$$
(21)
and keeping terms linear in the complex functions $`u(x)`$ and $`v(x)`$ (linear-stability analysis). In the quasi-1D limit (defocusing NLSE) one finds

$$ϵ_k=\sqrt{\frac{k^2}{2}\left(\frac{k^2}{2}+2g^{}n\right)},$$
(22)
where $`\omega =g^{}n`$, $`n=N/L`$ is the axial density and $`g^{}=2a_s/a_{}`$.

By suddenly changing the scattering length $`a_s`$ to a negative value, the excitations frequencies corresponding to

$$k<k_c=\sqrt{16\pi |g^{}|n}$$
(23)
become imaginary and, as a result, small perturbations grow exponentially in time. This penomenon is known as modulational instability . It is easy to find that the maximum rate of growth is at $`k_0=k_c/\sqrt{2}`$. The wavelength of this mode is $`\lambda _0=2\pi /k_0`$ and the ratio $`L/\lambda _0`$ gives an estimate of the number $`N_{BS}`$ of bright solitons which are generated:

$$N_{BS}=\frac{\sqrt{N|a_s|L}}{\pi a_{}}.$$
(24)
The predicted number $`N_{BS}`$ of bright solitons is in very good agreement with the numerical results of 3D GPE  and in rough agreement with the experimental results . Note that the finite resolution of the imaging process reduces the number of detected solitons .

Finally, we observe that Eq. (24) has been obtained by using NLSE. NPSE gives that same results of NLSE in the quasi-1D limit (of experiment ) but predicts the formation a large number of solitons also close to the critical point $`gn=1`$. The consequences of this prediction will be discussed elsewhere.

## Conclusions

In this paper we have shown that the solitary-waves studied in  belong to the stable branch $`1<\omega <1/2`$ we have here analytically found by using the Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion. In this branch, growing $`\omega `$ the number of particles $`N_s`$ increases and for a fixed $`N_s`$ the solitary-wave solution is fully determined. Since the study of the 3D model is usually time consuming, it is nice to have a simple 1D model to understand the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate. NPSE has the same numerical complexity of other one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equations but we have shown that it is not well approximated by the cubic or cubic-quintic Schrödinger equations. NPSE reflects correctly the 3D dynamics of Bose condensed solitary-waves and it predicts with considerable accuracy the collapse of the condensate. Moreover, we have shown the NPSE explains remarkably well the formation of multiple bright solitons by a sudden change of the sign of the nonlinear strength from positive to negative, as a consequence the modulational instability of the time-dependent wave function.