Subdiffractive band-edge solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates in periodic potentials

A type of matter wave diffraction management is presented that leads to subdiffractive solitonlike structures. The proposed management technique uses two counter-moving, identical periodic potentials (e.g., optical lattices). For suitable lattice parameters, a different type of atomic bandgap structure appears in which the effective atomic mass becomes infinite at the lowest edge of an energy band. This way, normal matter-wave diffraction (proportional to the square of the atomic momentum) is replaced by fourth-order diffraction, and hence the evolution of the system becomes subdiffractive.