Position-dependent spin-orbit coupling for ultracold atoms

Abstract

We theoretically explore atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) subject to position-dependent spin-orbit coupling (SOC). This SOC can be produced by cyclically laser coupling four internal atomic ground (or metastable) states in an environment where the detuning from resonance depends on position. The resulting spin-orbit coupled BEC phase-separates into domains, each of which contain density modulations - stripes - aligned either along the x or y direction. In each domain, the stripe orientation is determined by the sign of the local detuning. When these stripes have mismatched spatial periods along domain boundaries, non-trivial topological spin textures form at the interface, including skyrmions-like spin vortices and anti-vortices. In contrast to vortices present in conventional rotating BECs, these spin-vortices are stable topological defects that are not present in the corresponding homogenous stripe-phase spin-orbit coupled BECs.

References in corpus (10)

• Degenerate Quantum Gases with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Spin-Orbit Coupled Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Non-Abelian gauge potentials for ultra-cold atoms with degenerate dark states
• Spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• BCS-BEC crossover induced by a synthetic non-Abelian gauge field
• Non-equilibrium spin dynamics in a trapped Fermi gas with effective spin-orbit interaction
• Quasi-relativistic behavior of cold atoms in light fields
• Emergent patterns in a spin-orbit coupled spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensate
• Cold atom dynamics in non-Abelian gauge fields
• Topological interface physics of defects and textures in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Observation of the supersolid stripe phase in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates