We investigate the ground-state properties of spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in spin-dependent optical lattices. The competition between the spin-orbit coupling strength and the depth of the optical lattice leads to a rich phase diagram. Without spin-orbit coupling, the spin-dependent optical lattices separate the condensates into alternating spin domains with opposite magnetization directions. With relatively weak spin-orbit coupling, the spin domain wall is dramatically changed from Néel wall to Bloch wall. For sufficiently strong spin-orbit coupling, vortex chains and antivortex chains are excited in the spin-up and spin-down domains respectively, corresponding to the formation of a lattice composed of meron-pairs and antimeron-pairs in the pseudospin representation. We also discuss how to observe these phenomena in real experiments.
We investigate the ground-state properties of spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in spin-dependent optical lattices. The competition between the spin-orbit coupling strength and the depth of the optical lattice leads to a rich phase diagram. Without spin-orbit coupling, the spin-dependent optical lattices separate the condensates into alternating spin domains with opposite magnetization directions. With relatively weak spin-orbit coupling, the spin domain wall is dramatically changed from Néel wall to Bloch wall. For sufficiently strong spin-orbit coupling, vortex chains and antivortex chains are excited in the spin-up and spin-down domains respectively, corresponding to the formation of a lattice composed of meron-pairs and antimeron-pairs in the pseudospin representation. We also discuss how to observe these phenomena in real experiments.
We study the ground-state phases of a two-dimensional rotating spin-orbit–coupled Bose-Einstein condensate loaded in a one-dimensional spin-dependent optical lattice. In the absence of rotation, the system undergoes a phase transition from the stripe phase to the supersolid phase gradually for weak spin-orbit coupling strength and directly for strong spin-orbit coupling strength as the depth of the optical lattice increases. With increasing the rotation strength, the stripe phase transforms to the ringlike state, and the domain number of the ringlike state increases when the Bose-Einstein condensate is in the weak depth of the optical lattice. The supersolid phase transforms to the phase with a single domain of a vortex line for small rotation strength, and alternating vortex lines along the x -direction appear for large rotation strength when the Bose-Einstein condensate is in the strong depth of the optical lattice. The spin textures of the ground-state phases are also discussed.
We investigate the ground state of two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates with Rashba spin-orbit coupling in square optical lattices and demonstrate the existence of rich phases with different lattice structures, which is closely related to the degenerate structure of single particle energy spectrum induced by the competition of spin-orbit coupling and optical lattices. We find that the ground state is in the phase with either parity-time-reversal or parity symmetry by direct numerical simulation. We show the phase diagram of ground state in the whole regime of spin-orbit coupling strength, and particularly find that the system supports multi-fold vortex lattices, in which ground state holds half-quantum vortex lattices, vortex-antivortex pair lattices and fundamental vortex lattices, simultaneously, when single particle energy minimums touch the boundary of the first Brillouin zone.
We study the ground-state phases of two-dimensional spin-orbit coupled spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional spin-dependent optical lattice. Due to the competition among optical lattice, spin-orbit coupling and spin-exchange interaction, the exotic ground-state phases are found, i.e. three types of the stripe phases and three types of the supersolid phases. The spin-exchange interaction can adjust the direction of the stripe in the stripe phase and generate various vortex lattice structures in the supersolid phase, which shows that the spin-exchange interaction plays an important role in the formation of the stripe and supersolid phases of spin-orbit coupled spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice.
Abstract We investigate the ground-state properties of spin–orbit (SO)-coupled Bose–Einstein condensates confined in a spin-dependent asymmetric potential composed of harmonic and quartic contributions. The combined effect of the two potentials gives rise to an effective spatially inhomogeneous Zeeman field along the z -direction, and the complex competition among SO coupling, interatomic interactions, and this effective field leads to the emergence of nontrivial topological phases and complex spin textures in the system. For weak interatomic interactions, as the SO coupling strength increases, the system undergoes a series of transitions between ground-state phases: from a spin-polarized state, to an Anderson–Toulouse (AT) vortex state, a high-order radial dark soliton state, and finally to a domain structure. For strong interatomic interactions, the condensate evolves from a spin-polarized state to an AT vortex state, and then to a spatially coexisting state of AT and Mermin–Ho vortices, which corresponds to a novel topological excitation in pseudospin space: a skyrmion-dominated texture embedded with circular-hyperbolic antimeron pairs, realizing the coexistence and nesting of multiple topological defects. For sufficiently strong SO coupling, both components eventually evolve into similar multiring-shaped higher-order radial dark soliton states, with the number of soliton rings increasing as the SO coupling strength increases. Our results enrich the ground-state phases and topological excitations of cold atomic systems and provide new insights for exploring and manipulating nontrivial topological excitations in such systems.
We analytically and numerically discuss the dynamics of two pseudospin components Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in deep optical lattices. Rich localized phenomena, such as breathers, solitons, self-trapping, and diffusion, are revealed and strongly depend on the strength of the atomic interaction, SOC, Raman detuning, and the spin polarization (i.e., the initial population difference of atoms between the two pseudospin components of BECs). The critical conditions for the transition of localized states are derived analytically. Based on the critical conditions, the detailed dynamical phase diagram describing the different dynamical regimes is derived. When the Raman detuning satisfies a critical condition, localized states with a fixed initial spin polarization can be observed. When the critical condition is not satisfied, we use two quenching methods, i.e., suddenly and linearly quenching Raman detuning from the soliton or breather state, to discuss the spin dynamics, phase transition, and wave packet dynamics by numerical simulation. The sudden quenching results in a damped oscillation of spin polarization and transforms the system to a new polarized state. Interestingly, the linear quenching of Raman detuning induces a controllable phase transition from an unpolarized phase to an expected polarized phase, while the soliton or breather dynamics is maintained.
We investigate half-vortex sheets and domain-wall trains of rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in spin-dependent optical lattices. The two-component condensates undergo phase separation in the form of stripes arranged alternately. The vortices of one component are aligned in lines in the low-density regions and filled with the other component, which results in a stable vortex configuration, straight half-vortex sheets. A train of domain walls, with spatially periodic eyebrowlike spin textures embedded on them, are formed at the interfaces of the two components. We reveal that these spatially periodic textures on the domain walls result from the linear gradient of the relative phase, which is induced by the alternating arrangement of the vortex sheets in the two components. An accurate manipulation of the textures can be realized by adjusting the intercomponent interaction strength, the rotating angular frequency, and the period of the optical lattices. Under external disturbances, some interesting phenomena, including collective movement of vortices along the sheets and spin-wave propagation along the domain walls, as well as local spin precession, are observed.