Impurities in Bose-Einstein Condensates: From Polaron to Soliton

We propose that impurities in a Bose-Einstein condensate which is coupled to a transversely laser-pumped multimode cavity form an experimentally accessible and analytically tractable model system for the study of impurities solvated in correlated liquids and the breakdown of linear-response theory [corrected]. As the strength of the coupling constant between the impurity and the Bose-Einstein condensate is increased, which is possible through Feshbach resonance methods, the impurity passes from a large to a small polaron state, and then to an impurity-soliton state. This last transition marks the breakdown of linear-response theory.