Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1607.07336 · Physical Review A

Spin-orbit-coupling-induced magnetic heterostructure in the bilayer Bose-Hubbard system

Bo Xiong, Jun-Hui Zheng, Y.-J. Lin, Daw-Wei Wang

Published Dec 14, 2016• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the magnetic phases of a bilayer system of ultracold bosons in the presence of Raman-induced spin-orbit (SO) coupling and laser-assisted interlayer tunneling. We consider this bilayer system in the Mott-insulating regime where on-site two-body interactions exceed all the tunneling terms. In such a system there exists a rich set of spin textures including hetero-ferromagnetic, heterochiral magnetic, and chiral magnetic phases with interlayer antiferromagnetic. In particular, the heterochiral magnetic phase induced by SO coupling occurs extremely rarely in solid-state materials. We theoretically analyze the contribution of interlayer ferromagnetic interaction to the formation of these magnetic phases, including interactions that arise from laser-assisted tunneling, stagger ``magnetic field,'' and antisymmetric exchange, i.e., Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Finally, we detail an experimental setup that produces the desired interactions in a system of cold alkali-metal atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.94.063611

Related papers

Emergent Kitaev materials in synthetic Fermi-Hubbard bilayers

Daniel González-Cuadra, A. Bermúdez

We investigate the emergence of bond-directional spin-spin interactions in a synthetic Fermi-Hubbard bilayer that can be realized with ultracold fermions in Raman optical lattices. The model exploits synthetic dimensions to couple two honeycomb layers, each corresponding to a different hyperfine atomic state, via Raman-assisted tunneling and, moreover, via an inter-layer Hubbard repulsion due to the cold-atom scattering. In the strong-coupling regime at half filling, we derive effective spin Hamiltonians for the kinetic exchange featuring Kitaev, Heisenberg, off-diagonal exchange ( \Gamma Γ -couplings), as well as tunable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. We identify specific configurations that generate both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kitaev couplings with various perturbations of relevance to Kitaev materials, providing a tunable platform that can explore how quantum spin liquids emerge from itinerant fermion systems. We analyze the Fermi-liquid and Mott-insulating phases, highlighting a correspondence between Dirac and Majorana quasi-particles, with possible phase transitions thereof. In an extreme anisotropic limit, we show that the model reduces to an inter-layer ribbon in a quasi-1D ladder, allowing for a numerical study of the correlated ground state using matrix product states. We find a transition from a symmetry-protected topological insulator to a Kitaev-like regime characterized by nonlocal string order. Our results establish that cold-atom quantum simulators based on Raman optical lattices can be a playground for extended Kitaev models, bridging itinerant fermionic systems and spin-liquid physics.

arXiv:2504.15755•SciPost Physics•Nov 18, 2025•0 citations

Quantum phases of spin-orbital-angular-momentum–coupled bosonic gases in optical lattices

Rui Cao, Jinsen Han, Jianhua Wu +3 more

Spin-orbit coupling plays an important role in understanding exotic quantum phases. In this work, we present a scheme to combine spin-orbital-angular-momentum (SOAM) coupling and strong correlations in ultracold atomic gases. Essential ingredients of this setting is the interplay of SOAM coupling and Raman-induced spin-flip hopping, engineered by lasers that couples different hyperfine spin states. In the presence of SOAM coupling only, we find rich quantum phases in the Mott-insulating regime, which support different types of spin defects such as spin vortex and composite vortex with antiferromagnetic core surrounded by the outer spin vortex. Based on an effective exchange model, we find that these competing spin textures are a result of the interplay of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and Heisenberg exchange interactions. In the presence of both SOAM coupling and Raman-induced spin-flip hopping, more many-body phases appear, including canted-antiferromagnetic and stripe phases. Our prediction suggests that SOAM coupling could induce rich exotic many-body phases in the strongly interacting regime.

arXiv:2204.07323•Physical Review A•Jun 9, 2022•11 citations

Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling in bilayer Bose-Einstein condensates

Shih-Wei Su, Shih-Chuan Gou, Qing‐Feng Sun +5 more

We explore a way of producing the Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) for ultracold atoms by using a two-component (spinor) atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) confined in a bilayer geometry. The SOC of the Rashba type is created if the atoms pick up a $\ensuremath{\pi}$ phase after completing a cyclic transition between four combined spin-layer states composed of two spin and two layer states. The cyclic coupling of the spin-layer states is carried out by combining an intralayer Raman coupling and an interlayer laser assisted tunneling. We theoretically determine the ground-state phases of the spin-orbit-coupled BEC for various strengths of the atom-atom interaction and the laser-assisted coupling. It is shown that the bilayer scheme provides a diverse ground-state phase diagram. In an intermediate range of the atom-light coupling two interlacing lattices of half-skyrmions and half-antiskyrmions are spontaneously created. In the strong-coupling regime, where the SOC of the Rashba type is formed, the ground state represents plane-wave or standing-wave phases depending on the interaction between the atoms. A variational analysis is shown to be in good agreement with the numerical results.

arXiv:1603.09043•Physical Review A•May 31, 2016•22 citations

Spin-Orbit-Coupled Correlated Metal Phase in Kondo Lattices: An Implementation with Alkaline-Earth Atoms

Леонид Исаев, Johannes Schachenmayer, A. M. Rey

We show that an interplay between quantum effects, strong on-site ferromagnetic exchange interaction, and antiferromagnetic correlations in Kondo lattices can give rise to an exotic spin-orbit coupled metallic state in regimes where classical treatments predict a trivial insulating behavior. This phenomenon can be simulated with ultracold alkaline-earth fermionic atoms subject to a laser-induced magnetic field by observing dynamics of spin-charge excitations in quench experiments.

arXiv:1603.01946•Physical Review Letters•Sep 20, 2016•14 citations

Tunneling-assisted spin-orbit coupling in bilayer Bose-Einstein condensates

Qing Sun, Lin Wen, W.M. Liu +2 more

Motivated by the goal of realizing spin-orbit coupling (SOC) beyond one dimension, we propose and analyze a method to generate effective two-dimensional SOC in bilayer BECs with laser-assisted interlayer tunneling. We show that interplay among the interlayer tunneling, SOC, and intralayer atomic interaction can give rise to diverse ground-state configurations. In particular, the system undergoes a transition to a different type of stripe phase which spontaneously breaks the time-reversal symmetry. Different from the ordinary Rashba-type SOC, a fractionalized skyrmion lattice emerges spontaneously in the bilayer system without external traps. Furthermore, we predict the occurrence of a tetracritical point in the phase diagram of the bilayer BECs, where four phases merge. The origin of the different emerging phases is elucidated.

arXiv:1403.4338•Physical Review A•Mar 16, 2015•26 citations

Strong-coupling phases of the spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose-Hubbard chain: Odd-integer Mott lobes and helical magnetic phases

J. H. Pixley, William S. Cole, Ian B. Spielman +2 more

We study the odd-integer filled Mott phases of a spin-1 Bose-Hubbard chain and determine their fate in the presence of a Raman induced spin-orbit coupling which has been achieved in ultracold atomic gases; this system is described by a quantum spin-1 chain with a spiral magnetic field. The spiral magnetic field initially induces helical order with either ferromagnetic or dimer order parameters, giving rise to a spiral paramagnet at large field. The spiral ferromagnet-to-paramagnet phase transition is in a universality class with critical exponents associated with the divergence of the correlation length $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}2/3$ and the order-parameter susceptibility $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\approx}1/2$. We solve the effective spin model exactly using the density-matrix renormalization group, and compare with both a large-$S$ classical solution and a phenomenological Landau theory. We discuss how these exotic bosonic magnetic phases can be produced and probed in ultracold atomic experiments in optical lattices.

arXiv:1705.06742•Physical Review A•Oct 23, 2017•12 citations
We investigate the magnetic phases of a bilayer system of ultracold bosons in the presence of Raman-induced spin-orbit (SO) coupling and laser-assisted interlayer tunneling. We consider this bilayer system in the Mott-insulating regime where on-site two-body interactions exceed all the tunneling terms. In such a system there exists a rich set of spin textures including hetero-ferromagnetic, heterochiral magnetic, and chiral magnetic phases with interlayer antiferromagnetic. In particular, the heterochiral magnetic phase induced by SO coupling occurs extremely rarely in solid-state materials. We theoretically analyze the contribution of interlayer ferromagnetic interaction to the formation of these magnetic phases, including interactions that arise from laser-assisted tunneling, stagger ``magnetic field,'' and antisymmetric exchange, i.e., Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Finally, we detail an experimental setup that produces the desired interactions in a system of cold alkali-metal atoms.
We investigate the emergence of bond-directional spin-spin interactions in a synthetic Fermi-Hubbard bilayer that can be realized with ultracold fermions in Raman optical lattices. The model exploits synthetic dimensions to couple two honeycomb layers, each corresponding to a different hyperfine atomic state, via Raman-assisted tunneling and, moreover, via an inter-layer Hubbard repulsion due to the cold-atom scattering. In the strong-coupling regime at half filling, we derive effective spin Hamiltonians for the kinetic exchange featuring Kitaev, Heisenberg, off-diagonal exchange ( \Gamma Γ -couplings), as well as tunable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. We identify specific configurations that generate both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kitaev couplings with various perturbations of relevance to Kitaev materials, providing a tunable platform that can explore how quantum spin liquids emerge from itinerant fermion systems. We analyze the Fermi-liquid and Mott-insulating phases, highlighting a correspondence between Dirac and Majorana quasi-particles, with possible phase transitions thereof. In an extreme anisotropic limit, we show that the model reduces to an inter-layer ribbon in a quasi-1D ladder, allowing for a numerical study of the correlated ground state using matrix product states. We find a transition from a symmetry-protected topological insulator to a Kitaev-like regime characterized by nonlocal string order. Our results establish that cold-atom quantum simulators based on Raman optical lattices can be a playground for extended Kitaev models, bridging itinerant fermionic systems and spin-liquid physics.
Spin-orbit coupling plays an important role in understanding exotic quantum phases. In this work, we present a scheme to combine spin-orbital-angular-momentum (SOAM) coupling and strong correlations in ultracold atomic gases. Essential ingredients of this setting is the interplay of SOAM coupling and Raman-induced spin-flip hopping, engineered by lasers that couples different hyperfine spin states. In the presence of SOAM coupling only, we find rich quantum phases in the Mott-insulating regime, which support different types of spin defects such as spin vortex and composite vortex with antiferromagnetic core surrounded by the outer spin vortex. Based on an effective exchange model, we find that these competing spin textures are a result of the interplay of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and Heisenberg exchange interactions. In the presence of both SOAM coupling and Raman-induced spin-flip hopping, more many-body phases appear, including canted-antiferromagnetic and stripe phases. Our prediction suggests that SOAM coupling could induce rich exotic many-body phases in the strongly interacting regime.
We explore a way of producing the Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) for ultracold atoms by using a two-component (spinor) atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) confined in a bilayer geometry. The SOC of the Rashba type is created if the atoms pick up a $\ensuremath{\pi}$ phase after completing a cyclic transition between four combined spin-layer states composed of two spin and two layer states. The cyclic coupling of the spin-layer states is carried out by combining an intralayer Raman coupling and an interlayer laser assisted tunneling. We theoretically determine the ground-state phases of the spin-orbit-coupled BEC for various strengths of the atom-atom interaction and the laser-assisted coupling. It is shown that the bilayer scheme provides a diverse ground-state phase diagram. In an intermediate range of the atom-light coupling two interlacing lattices of half-skyrmions and half-antiskyrmions are spontaneously created. In the strong-coupling regime, where the SOC of the Rashba type is formed, the ground state represents plane-wave or standing-wave phases depending on the interaction between the atoms. A variational analysis is shown to be in good agreement with the numerical results.
Motivated by the goal of realizing spin-orbit coupling (SOC) beyond one dimension, we propose and analyze a method to generate effective two-dimensional SOC in bilayer BECs with laser-assisted interlayer tunneling. We show that interplay among the interlayer tunneling, SOC, and intralayer atomic interaction can give rise to diverse ground-state configurations. In particular, the system undergoes a transition to a different type of stripe phase which spontaneously breaks the time-reversal symmetry. Different from the ordinary Rashba-type SOC, a fractionalized skyrmion lattice emerges spontaneously in the bilayer system without external traps. Furthermore, we predict the occurrence of a tetracritical point in the phase diagram of the bilayer BECs, where four phases merge. The origin of the different emerging phases is elucidated.
We study the odd-integer filled Mott phases of a spin-1 Bose-Hubbard chain and determine their fate in the presence of a Raman induced spin-orbit coupling which has been achieved in ultracold atomic gases; this system is described by a quantum spin-1 chain with a spiral magnetic field. The spiral magnetic field initially induces helical order with either ferromagnetic or dimer order parameters, giving rise to a spiral paramagnet at large field. The spiral ferromagnet-to-paramagnet phase transition is in a universality class with critical exponents associated with the divergence of the correlation length $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}2/3$ and the order-parameter susceptibility $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\approx}1/2$. We solve the effective spin model exactly using the density-matrix renormalization group, and compare with both a large-SSS classical solution and a phenomenological Landau theory. We discuss how these exotic bosonic magnetic phases can be produced and probed in ultracold atomic experiments in optical lattices.