A theoretical model of a Bose-Einstein condensate with angular spin-orbit coupling has recently been proposed and it has been established that a half-skyrmion represents the ground state in a certain regime of spin-orbit coupling and interaction. Here we investigate low-lying excitations of this phase by using the Bogoliubov method and numerical simulations of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find that a sudden shift of the trap bottom results in a complex two-dimensional motion of the system's center of mass that is markedly different from the response of a competing phase, and comprises two dominant frequencies. Moreover, the breathing mode frequency of the half-skyrmion is set by both the spin-orbit coupling and the interaction strength, while in the competing state it takes a universal value. Effects of interactions are especially pronounced at the transition between the two phases.
A theoretical model of a Bose-Einstein condensate with angular spin-orbit coupling has recently been proposed and it has been established that a half-skyrmion represents the ground state in a certain regime of spin-orbit coupling and interaction. Here we investigate low-lying excitations of this phase by using the Bogoliubov method and numerical simulations of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find that a sudden shift of the trap bottom results in a complex two-dimensional motion of the system's center of mass that is markedly different from the response of a competing phase, and comprises two dominant frequencies. Moreover, the breathing mode frequency of the half-skyrmion is set by both the spin-orbit coupling and the interaction strength, while in the competing state it takes a universal value. Effects of interactions are especially pronounced at the transition between the two phases.
Realization of spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical trap has made it possible to create a variety of topological nontrivial structures, due to the vector character of the order parameter. Recently, artificial spin-orbit coupling in the spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, owing to coupling between the spin and the center-of-mass motion of the atom, provides an unprecedented opportunity to search for novel quantum states. As is well known, the potential well in the Bose-Einstein condensate is adjustable. The toroidal trap is an important model potential because of its simplicity and richness in physics. In particular, the spinor Bose-Einstein condensate under the toroidal trap has brought an ideal platform for studying fascinating properties of a superfluid, such as persistent flow and symmetry-breaking localization. For the case of the spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate, the previous studies of the toroidal trap mainly focused on the two-component or antiferromagnetic case. However, in the presence of a toroidal trap, there remains an open question whether the combined effects of the spin-orbit coupling and rotation can produce previously unknown types of topological excitations in the ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate. In this work, by using quasi two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equations, we study the ground state structure of spin-orbit coupled rotating ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate in the toroidal trap. We concentrate on the effects of the spin-orbit coupling and the rotation on the ground states. The numerical results show that in the presence of a toroidal trap, the ground state structure is displayed as half-skyrmion chain with circular distribution. Adjusting the strength of spin-orbit coupling not only changes the number of half-skyrmion in the system, but also controls the symmetry of half-skyrmion with circular distribution. As the rotation frequency increases, the system undergoes the transitions from the plane wave to the half-skyrmion chain with circular distribution, and eventually developing the half-skyrmion phase of triangular lattice. Next, we examine the effect of spin-independent interaction on spin-orbit coupled rotating spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. As the spin-independent interaction increases, the topological defects in the condensate increase due to the variation of the local magnetic order. We also discuss the influence of well shape on the ground state structure. These topological structures can be detected via the time-of-flight absorption imaging technique. The spin-orbit coupled spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in the toroidal trap is an important quantum platform, which not only opens up a new avenue for exploring the exotic topological structures, but also is crucial for realizing the transitions among different ground states. This work paves the way for futureexploring the topological defects and the corresponding dynamical stability in quantum system subjected to the toroidal trap.
We theoretically investigate the condensate state and collective excitations of a two-component Bose gas in a two-dimensional harmonic trap subject to isotropic Rashba spin-orbit coupling. In the weakly interacting regime when the interspecies interaction is larger than the intraspecies interaction (${g}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\downarrow}}>g$), we find that the condensate ground state has a half-quantum angular momentum vortex configuration with spatial rotational symmetry and skyrmion-type spin texture. Upon increasing the interatomic interaction beyond a threshold gc, the ground state starts to involve higher-order angular momentum components and thus breaks rotational symmetry. In the case of ${g}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\downarrow}}<g$, the condensate becomes unstable toward the superposition of two degenerate half-quantum vortex states. Both instabilities (at g>gc and ${g}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}\ensuremath{\downarrow}}<g$) can be determined by solving the Bogoliubov equations for collective density oscillations of the half-quantum vortex state and by analyzing the softening of mode frequencies. We obtain the phase diagram as a function of the interatomic interactions and the spin-orbit coupling. In addition, we directly simulate the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation to examine the dynamical properties of the system. Finally, we investigate the stability of the half-quantum vortex state against both trap anisotropy and anisotropy in the spin-orbit coupling.
We study analytically and asymptotically, as well as numerically, ground states and dynamics of two-component spin-orbit-coupled Bose--Einstein condensates (BECs) modeled by the coupled Gross--Pitaevskii equations (CGPEs). In fact, due to the appearance of the spin-orbit (SO) coupling in the two-component BEC with a Raman coupling, the ground state structures and dynamical properties become very rich and complicated. For the ground states, we establish existence and nonexistence results under different parameter regimes and obtain their limiting behaviors and/or structures with different combinations of the SO and Raman coupling strengths. For the dynamics, we show that the motion of the center-of-mass is either nonperiodic or with different frequency than the trapping frequency when the external trapping potential is taken as harmonic and/or the initial data is chosen as a stationary state (e.g., ground state) with a shift, which is completely different from the case of a two-component BEC without the SO coupling, and obtain the semiclassical limit of the CGPEs in the linear case via the Wigner transform method. Efficient and accurate numerical methods are proposed for computing the ground states and dynamics, especially for the case of box potentials. Numerical results are reported to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the numerical methods and show the rich phenomenon in the SO-coupled BECs.
Motivated by recent experiments [Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 113204 (2018); Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 250401 (2018)], we investigate the low-lying excitation spectrum of the ground-state phases of spin-orbital-angular-momentum-coupled (SOAM-coupled) spin-1 condensates. At vanishing detuning, a ferromagnetic SOAM-coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) can have two ground-state phases, namely, coreless and polar-core vortex states, whereas an antiferromagnetic BEC supports only polar-core vortex solution. The angular momentum per particle, longitudinal magnetization, and excitation frequencies display discontinuities across the phase boundary between the coreless vortex and polar-core vortex phases. The low-lying excitation spectrum evaluated by solving the Bogoliubov--de Gennes equations is marked by avoided crossings and hence the hybridization of the spin and density channels. The spectrum is further confirmed by the dynamical evolution of the ground state subjected to a perturbation suitable to excite a density or a spin mode and a variational analysis for the density-breathing mode.
We study analytically and asymptotically as well as numerically ground states and dynamics of two-component spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) modeled by the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (CGPEs). In fact, due to the appearance of the spin-orbit (SO) coupling in the two-component BEC with a Raman coupling, the ground state structures and dynam- ical properties become very rich and complicated. For the ground states, we establish the existence and non-existence results under different parameter regimes, and obtain their limiting behaviors and/or structures with different combinations of the SO and Raman coupling strengths. For the dynamics, we show that the motion of the center-of-mass is either non-periodic or with different frequency to the trapping frequency when the external trapping potential is taken as harmonic and the initial data is chosen as a stationary state (e.g. ground state) with a shift, which is completely different from the case of a two-component BEC without the SO coupling, and obtain the semiclas- sical limit of the CGPEs in the linear case via the Wigner transform method. Efficient and accurate numerical methods are proposed for computing the ground states and dynamics, especially for the case of box potentials. Numerical results are reported to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the numerical methods and show the rich phenomenon in the SO-coupled BECs.
We study analytically and numerically the nonlinear collective dynamics of quasi-one-dimensional spin–orbit coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates trapped in harmonic potential. The ground state of the system is determined by minimizing the Lagrange density, and the coupled equations of motions for the center-of-mass coordinate of the condensate and its width are derived. Then, two low energy excitation modes in breathing dynamics and dipole dynamics are obtained analytically, and the mechanism of exciting the anharmonic collective dynamics is revealed explicitly. The coupling among spin–orbit coupling, Raman coupling and spin-dependent interaction results in multiple external collective modes, which leads to the anharmonic collective dynamics. The cooperative effect of spin momentum locking and spin-dependent interaction results in coupling of dipolar and breathing dynamics, which strongly depends on spin-dependent interaction and behaves distinct characters in different phases. Interestingly, in the absence of spin-dependent interaction, the breathing dynamics is decoupled from spin dynamics and the breathing dynamics is harmonic. Our results provide theoretical evidence for deep understanding of the ground sate phase transition and the nonlinear collective dynamics of the system.