Many-body processes in black and gray matter-wave solitons

We perform a comparative beyond-mean-field study of black and gray solitonic excitations in a finite ensemble of ultracold bosons confined to a one-dimensional box. An optimized density-engineering potential is developed and employed together with phase imprinting to cleanly initialize gray solitons. By means of ab initio simulations with the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons, we demonstrate that quantum fluctuations limit the lifetime of the soliton contrast, which increases with increasing soliton velocity. A natural orbital analysis reveals a two-stage process underlying the decay of the soliton contrast. The broken parity symmetry of gray solitons results in a local asymmetry of the orbital mainly responsible for the decay, which leads to a characteristic asymmetry of remarkably localized two-body correlations. The emergence and decay of these correlations as well as their displacement from the instantaneous soliton position are analyzed in detail. Finally, the role of phase imprinting for the many-body dynamics is illuminated and additional nonlocal correlations in pairs of counterpropagating gray solitons are observed.