arXiv:1709.01978 · Physical Review A
Oscillating Casimir potential between two impurities in a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
Pei-Song He, Qing Sun, An-Chun Ji
Abstract
We study the Casimir potential between two impurities immersed in a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with plane-wave order. We find that by exchanging the virtual excitations, a remarkable anisotropic oscillating potential with both positive and negative parts can be induced between the impurities, with the period of the oscillation depending on the spin-orbit-coupling strength. As a consequence, this would inevitably lead to a noncentral Casimir force, which can be tuned by varying the strength of the spin-orbit coupling (SOC). These results are elucidated for BECs with one-dimensional Raman-induced and two-dimensional Rashba-type SOCs.