Bose Hubbard Models with Synthetic Spin-Orbit Coupling: Mott Insulators, Spin Textures and Superfluidity

Abstract

Motivated by the experimental realization of synthetic spin-orbit coupling for ultracold atoms, we investigate the phase diagram of the Bose Hubbard model in a non-abelian gauge field in two dimensions. Using a strong coupling expansion in the combined presence of spin-orbit coupling and tunable interactions, we find a variety of interesting magnetic Hamiltonians in the Mott insulator (MI), which support magnetic textures such as spin spirals and vortex and Skyrmion crystals. An inhomogeneous mean field treatment shows that the superfluid (SF) phases inherit these exotic magnetic orders from the MI and display, in addition, unusual modulated current patterns. We present a slave boson theory which gives insight into such intertwined spin-charge orders in the SF, and discuss signatures of these orders in Bragg scattering, in situ microscopy, and dynamic quench experiments.

4 pages + references + supplementary info

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• A Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Uniform Light-induced Vector Potential
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Exotic quantum spin models in spin-orbit-coupled Mott insulators
• Time-Reversal-Invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard Model with Ultracold Fermions
• Spin Orbit Coupling in Periodically Driven Optical Lattices
• Quantum phases of attractive bosons on a Bose-Hubbard ladder with three-body constraint
• Topological transport in a spin-orbit coupled bosonic Mott insulator