Faraday waves in high-density cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates

Motivated by the experimental achievement of Faraday waves in Bose-Einstein condensates and concurrent theoretical works, we investigate the dynamics of a high-density cigar-shaped condensate subject to periodic modulation of the strength of the transverse confinement. To this end, we propose a one-dimensional non-polynomial Schrodinger equation specifically designed for high-density cigar-shaped condensates and offer an analytical description of the observed patterns. The key ingredient of our equation is a q-Gaussian ansatz which accurately describes the high-density regime of a Bose-Einstein condensate. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.