Geometric analysis of bifurcation and symmetry breaking in a Gross-Pitaevskii equation

Gross-Pitaevskii and nonlinear Hartree equations are equations of nonlinear Schrodinger type that play an important role in the theory of Bose-Einstein condensation. Recent results of Aschbacher et al.((3)) demonstrate, for a class of 3-dimensional models, that for large boson number (squared L-2 norm), N, the ground state does not have the symmetry properties of the ground state at small N. We present a detailed global study of the symmetry breaking bifurcation for a 1-dimensional model Gross-Pitaevskii equation, in which the external potential (boson trap) is an attractive double-well, consisting of two attractive Dirac delta functions concentrated at distinct points. Using dynamical systems methods, we present a geometric analysis of the symmetry breaking bifurcation of an asymmetric ground state and the exchange of dynamical stability from the symmetric branch to the asymmetric branch at the bifurcation point.