Realizing bright matter-wave soliton collisions with controlled relative phase

Abstract: We propose a method to split the ground state of an attractively interacting atomic Bose-Einstein condensate into two bright solitary waves with controlled relative phase and velocity. We analyze the stability of these waves against their subsequent re-collisions at the center of a cylindrically symmetric, prolate harmonic trap as a function of relative phase, velocity, and trap anisotropy. We show that the collisional stability is strongly dependent on relative phase at low velocity, and we identify previously unobserved oscillations in the collisional stability as a function of the trap anisotropy. An experimental implementation of our method would determine the validity of the mean field description of bright solitary waves, and could prove an important step towards atom interferometry experiments involving bright solitary waves.