Quantum breathers associated with modulational instability in 1D ultracold boson in optical lattices involving next-nearest neighbor interactions

Abstract The dynamics and modulation instability of an ultracold gas of bosonic atoms in an optical lattice can be portrayed by a Bose–Hubbard model and the system parameters are mastered by laser light. Based on the time dependent Hartree approximation combined with the semi-discrete multiple-scale method, the equation of motion for single-boson wave function is found analytically, the existence conditions of appearance of bright stationary localized solitons solutions of this quantum Bose–Hubbard model are discussed. We find that the introduction of the next nearest neighbor interactions (NNNI) may change the stability property of the plane waves and may predict the formation of modulational instability in the wave number k  =  k max and k  =  k eBZ in the system. With the help of stationary localized single-boson wave functions obtained, the quantized energy level and the quantum breather state are determined. The performance of the analytical results are checked by numerical calculations. Furthermore, we have shown that the presence of the NNNI affect significatively the shape of the region of modulational instability and it is responsible of the appearance of new region of modulational instability that occurs for the k  =  k max carrier wave. The formation conditions of the modulational instability region predicted by the analytical analysis of stationary localized solutions in the wave number k  =  k max and k  =  k eBZ are in good agreement with the forecast respectively.