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arXiv:1506.03590 · Scientific Reports

Simulating Chiral Magnetic and Separation Effects with Spin-Orbit Coupled Atomic Gases

Xu-Guang Huang

Published Feb 12, 2016• 26 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The chiral magnetic and chiral separation effects-quantum-anomaly-induced electric current and chiral current along an external magnetic field in parity-odd quark-gluon plasma-have received intense studies in the community of heavy-ion collision physics. We show that analogous effects occur in rotating trapped Fermi gases with Weyl-Zeeman spin-orbit coupling where the rotation plays the role of an external magnetic field. These effects can induce a mass quadrupole in the atomic cloud along the rotation axis which may be tested in future experiments. Our results suggest that the spin-orbit coupled atomic gases are potential simulators of the chiral magnetic and separation effects.

DOI
10.1038/srep20601

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Spin-orbit coupling is of fundamental interest in both quantum optical and condensed matter systems alike. In this work, we show that optically induced electronic excitations in lattices of V-type atoms exhibit an emergent spin-orbit coupling when the geometry is chiral. This spin-orbit coupling arises naturally from the electric dipole interaction between the atomic sites and leads to a nontrivial topology for the lattice band structure. Using a general quantum optical model, we determine analytically the conditions that give rise to spin-orbit coupling and characterize the behavior under various symmetry transformations. We demonstrate that chirality-induced spin-orbit coupling can result from either the chirality of the underlying lattice geometry or the combination of an achiral lattice with a suitably chosen external quantization axis. We then discuss how these results are influenced by dissipation, which breaks time-reversal symmetry and illuminates the distinction between true and false chirality. Our results demonstrate that chiral atom arrays are a robust platform for realizing spin-orbit-coupled topological states of matter.