Double parametric resonance for matter-wave solitons in a time-modulated trap

We analyze the motion of solitons in a self-attractive Bose-Einstein condensate, loaded into a quasi-one-dimensional parabolic potential trap, which is subjected to time-periodic modulation with an amplitude epsilon and frequency Omega. First, we apply the variational approximation, which gives rise to decoupled equations of motion for the center-of-mass coordinate of the soliton, xi (t), and its width a (t). The equation for xi (t) is the ordinary Mathieu equation (ME) (it is an exact equation that does not depend on the adopted ansatz), the equation for a (t) being a nonlinear generalization of the ME. Both equations give rise to the same map of instability zones in the (epsilon,Omega) plane, generated by the parametric resonances (PRs), if the instability is defined as the onset of growth of the amplitude of the parametrically driven oscillations. In this sense, the double PR is predicted. Direct simulations of the underlying Gross-Pitaevskii equation give rise to a qualitatively similar but quantitatively different stability map for oscillations of the soliton's width a (t). In the direct simulations, we identify the soliton dynamics as unstable if the instability (again, realized as indefinite growth of the amplitude of oscillations) can be detected during a time comparable with, or smaller than, the lifetime of the condensate (therefore accessible to experimental detection). Two-soliton configurations are also investigated. It is concluded that multiple collisions between solitons are elastic, and they do not affect the instability borders.