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arXiv:1210.5030 · Physical Review A

Zitterbewegungeffect in spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 ultracold atoms

Yi‐Cai Zhang, Shu-Wei Song, Chaofei Liu, Wu‐Ming Liu

Published Feb 15, 2013• 28 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Zitterbewegung effect in spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 cold atoms is investigated in the presence of the Zeeman field and a harmonic trap. It is shown that the Zeeman field and the harmonic trap have significant effect on the Zitterbewegung oscillatory behaviors. The external Zeeman field could suppress or enhance the Zitterbewegung amplitude and change the frequencies of oscillation. A much slowly damping Zitterbewegung oscillation can be achieved by adjusting both the linear and the quadratic Zeeman fields. Multifrequency Zitterbewegung oscillation can be induced by the applied Zeeman field. In the presence of the harmonic trap, the subpackets corresponding to different eigenenergies would always keep coherent, resulting in the persistent Zitterbewegung oscillations. The Zitterbewegung oscillation would display very complicated and irregular oscillation characteristics due to the coexistence of different frequencies of the Zitterbewegung oscillation. Furthermore, numerical results show that the Zitterbewegung effect is robust even in the presence of interaction between atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.87.023612

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The Zitterbewegung effect in spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 cold atoms is investigated in the presence of the Zeeman field and a harmonic trap. It is shown that the Zeeman field and the harmonic trap have significant effect on the Zitterbewegung oscillatory behaviors. The external Zeeman field could suppress or enhance the Zitterbewegung amplitude and change the frequencies of oscillation. A much slowly damping Zitterbewegung oscillation can be achieved by adjusting both the linear and the quadratic Zeeman fields. Multifrequency Zitterbewegung oscillation can be induced by the applied Zeeman field. In the presence of the harmonic trap, the subpackets corresponding to different eigenenergies would always keep coherent, resulting in the persistent Zitterbewegung oscillations. The Zitterbewegung oscillation would display very complicated and irregular oscillation characteristics due to the coexistence of different frequencies of the Zitterbewegung oscillation. Furthermore, numerical results show that the Zitterbewegung effect is robust even in the presence of interaction between atoms.
Abstract The dynamics of non-interacting ultracold atoms with artificial spin–orbit coupling is considered. Spin–orbit coupling is created using two moving optical lattices with orthogonal polarizations. Our main goal is to study influence of lattice noise on Rabi oscillations. Special attention is paid to the phenomenon of the Zitterbewegung being trembling motion caused by Rabi transitions between states with different velocities. Phase and amplitude fluctuations of lattices are modelled by means of the two-dimensional stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, also known as harmonic noise. In the the noiseless case the problem is solved analytically in terms of the momentum representation. It is shown that lattice noise significantly extends duration of the Zitterbewegung as compared to the noiseless case. This effect originates from noise-induced decoherence of Rabi oscillations.
Dynamical characteristics of internal and external states of a Bose-Einstein condensate are generally different and independent, thus requiring different experimental manipulation techniques. The spin-orbit coupling recently achieved in Bose-Einstein condensates essentially connects spin and motion degree of freedom, endowing spin states with the ability to respond to orbital manipulation, and vice versa. In this work, a dynamical response effect, induced by simultaneously manipulating the internal and external states of a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate, is predicted. Here, the “simultaneously manipulating the internal and external states” means that the driving field combines the Zeeman field applied to the internal state of the atom and the orbital potential affecting the external states of the atom. Specifically, the Bose-Einstein condensate is assumed to be activated by an abruptly applied Zeeman field and a sudden shake of the trapping potential. After some reasonable simplification and approximation of the model (i.e. neglecting the inter-atomic interactions and modelling the shake of the trapping potential by a short time-dependent pulse), an analytical relationship connecting spin frequency spectrum and the parameters of the driving fields is derived. The numerical calculations based on directly integrating the Gross-Pitaevskii equation are in good agreement with the results from the analytical relationship. The physical origin of the predicted spin dynamical response can be traced back to the quantum interference among different spin-orbit states. Due to the fact that a series of characteristic parameters of the condensate can be manifested in the spin frequency spectrum, the dynamical response effect predicted here provides a candidate method for determining and calibrating various system parameters by measuring the spin frequency spectrum.
By considering mirror oscillation in a ``tripod-scheme'' laser-atom system, we advocate explorative studies of driven Dirac-like equations. Both analytical and numerical studies show that mirror oscillation can be used to drive an effective spin-orbit interaction and hence control the amplitude, the frequency, and the damping of the cold-atom Zitterbewegung oscillation. Our results demonstrate an interesting coupling between the mirror mechanical motion and a fundamental quantum coherent oscillation, opening up new means of matter-wave manipulation.
Rabi model is a popular model in quantum optics and describes a two-level system coupling to a quantum resonator. The fruitful physics appears when the coupling strength is comparable to the frequency of the resonator. We investigate the Bose gases of Raman induced spin-orbit coupling with an external harmonic trapping. Using the displacement Fock state in quantum optics we seek for an approximate ground state. We find the superposition state of left and right displaced oscillator state with odd parity has lower energy than the displaced state itself. Besides, we study the time evolution of both the momentum and the position of the system at single particle level to demonstrate the Zitterbewegung oscillating characteristics, which present an intuitive physical picture and are in qualitative agreement with the relevant experimental results. The results are useful to study the Rabi model in deep-strong coupling regime, the model that is difficult to realize in today’s experiment based on the high controllability property of laser, and these results are also instructive for the cold atom physics field.
Bloch oscillations appear for a particle in a weakly tilted periodic potential. The intrinsic spin Hall effect is an outcome of a spin-orbit coupling. We demonstrate that both of these phenomena can be realized simultaneously in a gas of weakly interacting ultracold atoms exposed to a tilted optical lattice and to a set of spatially dependent light fields inducing an effective spin-orbit coupling. It is found that both the spin Hall and the Bloch oscillation effects may coexist, showing, however, a strong correlation between the two. These correlations are manifested as a transverse spin current oscillating in-phase with the Bloch oscillations. On top of the oscillations originating from the periodicity of the model, a trembling motion is found which is believed to be atomic Zitterbewegung. It is argued that the damping of these Zitterbewegung oscillations may to a large extent be prevented in the present setup considering a periodic optical lattice potential.
We predict a dynamical resonant effect, which is driven by externally applied linear and quadratic Zeeman fields, in a spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate. The Bose-Einstein condensate is assumed to be initialized in some superposed state of Zeeman sublevels and subject to a sudden shift of the trapping potential. It is shown that the time-averaged center-of-mass oscillation and the spin polarizations of the Bose-Einstein condensate exhibit remarkable resonant peaks when the Zeeman fields are tuned to certain strengths. The underlying physics behind this resonance can be traced back to the out-of-phase interference of the dynamical phases carried by different spin-orbit states. By analyzing the single-particle spectrum, the resonant condition is summarized as a simple algebraic relation, connecting the strengths of the linear and quadratic Zeeman fields. This property is potentially applicable in quantum information and quantum precision measurement.