Statics and dynamics of a self-bound matter-wave quantum ball

Abstract

We study the statics and dynamics of a stable, mobile, three-dimensional matter-wave spherical quantum ball created in the presence of an attractive two-body and a very small repulsive three-body interaction. The quantum ball can propagate with a constant velocity in any direction in free space and its stability under a small perturbation is established numerically and variationally. In frontal head-on and angular collisions at large velocities two quantum balls behave like quantum solitons. Such collision is found to be quasielastic and the quantum balls emerge after collision without any change of direction of motion and velocity and with practically no deformation in shape. When reflected by a hard impenetrable plane, the quantum ball bounces off like a wave obeying the law of reflection without any change of shape or speed. However, in a collision at small velocities two quantum balls coalesce to form a larger ball which we call a quantum-ball breather. We point out the similarity and difference between the collision of two quantum and classical balls. The present study is based on an analytic variational approximation and a full numerical solution of the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation using the parameters of Li7 atoms.