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arXiv:0908.3631 · Physical Review Letters

Chiral Confinement in Quasirelativistic Bose-Einstein Condensates

M. Merkl, A. Jacob, Frank Zimmer, Patrik Öhberg, Luis Santos

Published Feb 18, 2010• 103 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In the presence of a laser-induced spin-orbit coupling an interacting ultracold spinor Bose-Einstein condensate may acquire a quasirelativistic character described by a nonlinear Dirac-like equation. We show that as a result of the spin-orbit coupling and the nonlinearity the condensate may become self-trapped, resembling the so-called chiral confinement, previously studied in the context of the massive Thirring model. We first consider 1D geometries where the self-confined condensates present an intriguing sinusoidal dependence on the interparticle interactions. We further show that multidimensional chiral confinement is also possible under appropriate feasible laser arrangements, and discuss the properties of 2D and 3D condensates, which differ significantly from the 1D case.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.104.073603

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In the presence of a laser-induced spin-orbit coupling an interacting ultracold spinor Bose-Einstein condensate may acquire a quasirelativistic character described by a nonlinear Dirac-like equation. We show that as a result of the spin-orbit coupling and the nonlinearity the condensate may become self-trapped, resembling the so-called chiral confinement, previously studied in the context of the massive Thirring model. We first consider 1D geometries where the self-confined condensates present an intriguing sinusoidal dependence on the interparticle interactions. We further show that multidimensional chiral confinement is also possible under appropriate feasible laser arrangements, and discuss the properties of 2D and 3D condensates, which differ significantly from the 1D case.
Recently achieved chiral condensates open intriguing avenues for the study of the chiral properties induced by current-density interactions. An attempt to include these features in a spinor system is presented, which gives rise to a nonlinear, effective spin-orbit coupling that emerges from the differential orbital currents, along with constraints in the conserved quantities due to the linear coupling between spin components. Chirality pervades the resulting spectrum of stationary states and their dynamical stability, which are explored in plane waves, dark and bright solitons, and Josephson vortices. Our analytical and numerical results reveal the destabilizing role of polarization and Josephson currents and support the existence of stable nonlinear states built of linear superpositions of plane waves.
We consider a cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of two-level atoms subjected to laser-induced Rabi coupling. By expanding the geometric vector potential to second order in the density-dependent fields and developing a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) reduction of the full three-dimensional problem via wave-function factorization, we derive an extended chiral Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation. We also derive traveling-wave solutions of the extended chiral GP equation using a projection (orthogonality) method, obtaining both bright and dark chiral solitons whose amplitudes and widths depend explicitly on the propagation direction. The chiral character of these solutions is confirmed through analytical analysis and numerical simulations. A BEC confined in a ring-shaped trap is also analyzed, leading to chiral soliton ring geometries. We show that a subtle interplay among density-dependent gauge potentials, confinement-induced interaction corrections, and higher-order current nonlinearities can give rise to alternative topological states, including chiral solitons and chiral ring solitons, in quasi-1D ultracold Bose gases. These results illustrate how higher-order corrections enrich BEC dynamics and provide means to control spatiotemporal structures in density-dependent condensates.
We investigate the ground states of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) subject to Raman laser induced spin-orbit coupling with mean-field theory. Owing to the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and atom-atom interactions, the BEC presents remarkable self-organization behavior and thus hosts various exotic phases including vortex with discrete rotational symmetry, stripe with spin helix, and chiral lattices with C4 symmetry. The peculiar chiral self-organized array of square lattice, which spontaneously breaks both U(1) and rotational symmetries, is observed when the contact interaction is considerable in comparison with the spin-orbit coupling. Moreover, we show that the Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling plays a crucial role in forming rich topological spin textures of the chiral self-organized phases by introducing a channel for atoms to turn on spin flipping between two components. The self-organization phenomena predicted here feature topology owing to spin-orbit coupling. In addition, we find long-lived metastable self-organized arrays with C6 symmetry in the case of strong spin-orbit coupling. We also present a proposal to observe these predicted phases in ultracold atomic dipolar gases with laser-induced spin-orbit coupling, which may stimulate broad theoretical as well as experimental interest.
We consider a binary Bose-Einstein condensate with linear and nonlinear interactions between its components, which emulate the spinor system with spin-orbit (SO) and Rabi couplings. For a relatively dense condensate, one-dimensional coupled equations with the nonpolynomial nonlinearity of both repulsive and attractive signs are derived from the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equations. Profiles of modes confined in an external potential under the action of the self-repulsion, and self-trapped solitons in the case of the self-attraction, are found in a numerical form and by means of analytical approximations. In the former case, the interplay of the SO and Rabi couplings with the repulsive nonlinearity strongly distorts shapes of the trapped modes, adding conspicuous sidelobes to them. In the case of the attractive nonlinearity, the most essential result is reduction of the collapse threshold under the action of the SO and Rabi couplings.
Realistic methods to create vortices in spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates are discussed. It is shown that, contrary to common intuition, rotation of the trap containing a spin-orbit condensate does not lead to an equilibrium state with static vortex structures but gives rise instead to nonequilibrium behavior described by an intrinsically time-dependent Hamiltonian. We propose here the following alternative methods to induce thermodynamically stable static vortex configurations: (i) to rotate both the lasers and the anisotropic trap and (ii) to impose a synthetic Abelian field on top of synthetic spin-orbit interactions. Effective Hamiltonians for spin-orbit condensates under such perturbations are derived for most currently known realistic laser schemes that induce synthetic spin-orbit couplings. The Gross-Pitaevskii equation is solved for several experimentally relevant regimes. The new interesting effects include spatial separation of left- and right-moving spin-orbit condensates, the appearance of unusual vortex arrangements, and parity effects in vortex nucleation where the topological excitations are predicted to appear in pairs. All these phenomena are shown to be highly nonuniversal and depend strongly on a specific laser scheme and system parameters.