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Solitary waves of Bose-Einstein condensed atoms confined in finite rings

Motivated by recent progress in trapping Bose-Einstein condensed atoms in toroidal potentials, we examine solitary-wave solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation subject to periodic boundary conditions. When the circumference of the ring is much larger than the size of the wave, the density profile is well approximated by that of an infinite ring, however the density and the velocity of propagation cannot vanish simultaneously. When the size of the ring becomes comparable to the size of the wave, the density variation becomes sinusoidal and the velocity of propagation saturates to a constant value.