Spin-orbit-coupling induced localization in the expansion of an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

By developing a hydrodynamic formalism, we investigate the expansion dynamics of the single-minimum phase of a binary spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate, after releasing from an external harmonic trap. We find that the expansion of the condensate along the direction of the spin-orbit coupling is dramatically slowed down near the transition between the single-minimum phase and the plane-wave phase. Such a slow expansion, resembling a form of an effective localization, is due to the quenching of the superfluid motion which results in a strong increase of the effective mass. In the single-minimum phase the anisotropic expansion of the Bose gas, which is spin balanced at equilibrium, is accompanied by the emergence of a local spin polarization. Our analytic scaling solutions emerging from hydrodynamic picture are compared with a full numerical simulation based on the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (10)

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Bright solitons in a spin-tensor-momentum-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
• Spin-orbit coupled soliton in a random potential
• Inverse engineering for fast transport and spin control of spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in moving harmonic traps
• Angular Momentum of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Synthetic Rotational Field
• Two-fluid theory for superfluid system with anisotropic effective masses
• (2+1)$-dimensional sonic black hole from spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate and its analogue Hawking radiation
• Dispersion engineering in spin-orbit coupled spinor $F=1$ condensates driven by negative masses
• Collective Oscillations of Bose-Einstein Condensates in a Synthetic Magnetic Field
• Band-edge superfluid of Bose-Einstein condensates in the spin-orbit-coupled Zeeman lattice
• Hydrodynamic equations for a U(N) invariant superfluid