Directed transport by nonlinear interactions in Bose-Einstein condensates

The Noble Prize winning advent of laser and evaporative cooling of dilute atomic gases has opened a new window into the quantum world. Bose-Einstein condensates in dilute atomic vapors allow a direct observation of many-body quantum phenomena by simply imaging them with a CCD camera. In addition their sensitivity to laser illumination enables an unprecedented control, including engineering of the phase of the atomic quantum wave function. This talk will introduce the world of dilute atomic quantum gases and focus on the creation and detection of non-linear excitations of the quantum wave function in particular solitons and more specifically Jones Roberts solitons. These self-stabilising form-stable excitations represent a fundamental excitation in many non-linear systems, ranging from DNA in biological systems to Tsunamis in the oceans and offer directed transport of energy through the system, which might be of benefit to future applications.