Modelling biological invasions: individual to population scales at interfaces

Extracting the population level behaviour of biological systems from that of the individual is critical in understanding dynamics across multiple scales and thus has been the subject of numerous investigations. Here, the influence of spatial heterogeneity in such contexts is explored for interfaces with a separation of the length scales characterising the individual and the interface, a situation that can arise in applications involving cellular modelling. As an illustrative example, we consider cell movement between white and grey matter in the brain which may be relevant in considering the invasive dynamics of glioma. We show that while one can safely neglect intrinsic noise, at least when considering glioma cell invasion, profound differences in population behaviours emerge in the presence of interfaces with only subtle alterations in the dynamics at the individual level. Transport driven by local cell sensing generates predictions of cell accumulations along interfaces where cell motility changes. This behaviour is not predicted with the commonly used Fickian diffusion transport model, but can be extracted from preliminary observations of specific cell lines in recent, novel, cryo-imaging. Consequently, these findings suggest a need to consider the impact of individual behaviour, spatial heterogeneity and especially interfaces in experimental and modelling frameworks of cellular dynamics, for instance in the characterisation of glioma cell motility

Solitons in combined linear and nonlinear lattice potentials

We study ordinary solitons and gap solitons (GSs) in the effectively one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation, with a combination of linear and nonlinear lattice potentials. The main points of the analysis are effects of the (in)commensurability between the lattices, the development of analytical methods, viz., the variational approximation (VA) for narrow ordinary solitons, and various forms of the averaging method for broad solitons of both types, and also the study of mobility of the solitons. Under the direct commensurability (equal periods of the lattices, the family of ordinary solitons is similar to its counterpart in the free space. The situation is different in the case of the subharmonic commensurability, with L_{lin}=(1/2)L_{nonlin}, or incommensurability. In those cases, there is an existence threshold for the solitons, and the scaling relation between their amplitude and width is different from that in the free space. GS families demonstrate a bistability, unless the direct commensurability takes place. Specific scaling relations are found for them too. Ordinary solitons can be readily set in motion by kicking. GSs are mobile too, featuring inelastic collisions. The analytical approximations are shown to be quite accurate, predicting correct scaling relations for the soliton families in different cases. The stability of the ordinary solitons is fully determined by the VK (Vakhitov-Kolokolov) criterion, while the stability of GS families follows an inverted ("anti-VK") criterion, which is explained by means of the averaging approximation.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Lie symmetries and solitons in nonlinear systems with spatially inhomogeneous nonlinearities

Using Lie group theory and canonical transformations we construct explicit solutions of nonlinear Schrodinger equations with spatially inhomogeneous nonlinearities. We present the general theory, use it to show that localized nonlinearities can support bound states with an arbitrary number solitons and discuss other applications of interest to the field of nonlinear matter waves

Laser tweezers for atomic solitons

We describe a controllable and precise laser tweezers for Bose-Einstein condensates of ultracold atomic gases. In our configuration, a laser beam is used to locally modify the sign of the scattering length in the vicinity of a trapped BEC. The induced attractive interactions between atoms allow to extract and transport a controllable number of atoms. We analyze, through numerical simulations, the number of emitted atoms as a function of the width and intensity of the outcoupling beam. We also study different configurations of our system, as the use of moving beams. The main advantage of using the control laser beam to modify the nonlinear interactions in comparison to the usual way of inducing optical forces, i.e. through linear trapping potentials, is to improve the controllability of the outcoupled solitary wave-packet, which opens new possibilities for engineering macroscopic quantum states.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Solitary Waves Under the Competition of Linear and Nonlinear Periodic Potentials

In this paper, we study the competition of linear and nonlinear lattices and its effects on the stability and dynamics of bright solitary waves. We consider both lattices in a perturbative framework, whereby the technique of Hamiltonian perturbation theory can be used to obtain information about the existence of solutions, and the same approach, as well as eigenvalue count considerations, can be used to obtained detailed conditions about their linear stability. We find that the analytical results are in very good agreement with our numerical findings and can also be used to predict features of the dynamical evolution of such solutions.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Collapse in boson-fermion mixtures with all-repulsive interactions

We describe the collapse of the bosonic component in a boson-fermion mixture due to the pressure exerted on them by a large fermionic component, leading to collapse in a system with all-repulsive interactions. We describe the phenomena early collapse and of super-slow collapse of the mixture.Comment: 5 page

Solitary waves for linearly coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations with inhomogeneous coefficients

Motivated by the study of matter waves in Bose-Einstein condensates and coupled nonlinear optical systems, we study a system of two coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations with inhomogeneous parameters, including a linear coupling. For that system we prove the existence of two different kinds of homoclinic solutions to the origin describing solitary waves of physical relevance. We use a Krasnoselskii fixed point theorem together with a suitable compactness criterion.Comment: 16 page