Self-trapping of impurities in Bose-Einstein condensates: Strong attractive and repulsive coupling

We study the interaction-induced localization - the so-called self-trapping - of a neutral impurity atom immersed in a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Based on a Hartree description of the BEC we show that - unlike repulsive impurities - attractive impurities have a singular ground state in 3d and shrink to a point-like state in 2d as the coupling approaches a critical value beta(star). Moreover, we find that the density of the BEC increases markedly in the vicinity of attractive impurities in 1d and 2d, which strongly enhances inelastic collisions between atoms in the BEC. These collisions result in a loss of BEC atoms and possibly of the localized impurity itself. Copyright (c) EPLA, 2008.