In this paper, I'm going to talk about the theoretical and experimental progress in studying spin-orbit coupled spin-1 bosons. Realization of spin-orbit coupled quantum gases opens a new avenue in cold atom physics. In particular, the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and inter-atomic interaction leads to many intriguing phenomena. Moreover, the non-zero momentum of ground states can be controlled by external fields, which allows for good quantum control.
In this paper, I'm going to talk about the theoretical and experimental progress in studying spin-orbit coupled spin-1 bosons. Realization of spin-orbit coupled quantum gases opens a new avenue in cold atom physics. In particular, the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and inter-atomic interaction leads to many intriguing phenomena. Moreover, the non-zero momentum of ground states can be controlled by external fields, which allows for good quantum control.
In this review we will discuss the experimental and theoretical progresses in studying spin–orbit coupled degenerate atomic gases during the last two years. We shall first review a series of pioneering experiments in generating synthetic gauge potentials and spin–orbit coupling in atomic gases by engineering atom-light interaction. Realization of spin–orbit coupled quantum gases opens a new avenue in cold atom physics, and also brings out a lot of new physical problems. In particular, the interplay between spin–orbit coupling and inter-atomic interaction leads to many intriguing phenomena. By reviewing recent theoretical studies of both interacting bosons and fermions with isotropic Rashba spin–orbit coupling, the key message delivered here is that spin–orbit coupling can enhance the interaction effects, and make the interaction effects much more dramatic even in the weakly interacting regime.
Abstract We briefly review the recent progress of theories and experiments on spin-orbital-angular-momentum (SOAM)-coupled quantum gases. The coupling between the intrinsic degree of freedom of particles and their external orbital motions widely exists in the universe and leads to a broad variety of fundamental phenomena in both classical physics and quantum mechanics. The recent realization of synthetic SOAM coupling in cold atoms has attracted a great deal of attention and stimulated a large amount of considerations on exotic quantum phases in both Bose and Fermi gases. In this review, we present a basic idea of engineering SOAM coupling in neutral atoms, starting from a semiclassical description of atom-light interaction. Unique features of single-particle physics in the presence of SOAM coupling are discussed. The intriguing ground-state quantum phases of weakly interacting Bose gases are introduced, with emphasis on a so-called angular stripe phase, which has not yet been observed at present. It is demonstrated how to generate a stable giant vortex in a SOAM-coupled Fermi superfluid. We also discuss the topological characters of a Fermi superfluid in the presence of SOAM coupling. We then introduce the experimental achievement of SOAM coupling in 87 87 Rb Bose gases and its first observation of phase transitions. The most recent development of SOAM-coupled Bose gases in experiments is also summarized. Regarding the controllability of ultracold quantum gases, it opens a new era, from the quantum simulation point of view, to study the fundamental physics resulting from SOAM coupling as well as newly emergent quantum phases.
This review focuses on recent developments in synthetic spin-orbit (SO) coupling in ultracold atomic gases. Two types of SO coupling are discussed. One is Raman process induced coupling between spin and motion along one of the spatial directions and the other is Rashba SO coupling. We emphasize their common features in both single-particle and two-body physics and the consequences of both in many-body physics. For instance, single particle ground state degeneracy leads to novel features of superfluidity and a richer phase diagram; increased low-energy density-of-state enhances interaction effects; the absence of Galilean invariance and spin-momentum locking gives rise to intriguing behaviours of superfluid critical velocity and novel quantum dynamics; and the mixing of two-body singlet and triplet states yields a novel fermion pairing structure and topological superfluids. With these examples, we show that investigating SO coupling in cold atom systems can, enrich our understanding of basic phenomena such as superfluidity, provide a good platform for simulating condensed matter states such as topological superfluids and more importantly, result in novel quantum systems such as SO coupled unitary Fermi gas and high spin quantum gases. Finally we also point out major challenges and some possible future directions.
Ultra-cold quantum gases subjected to light-induced synthetic gauge potentials have become an emergent field of theoretical and experimental studies. Because of the novel application of two-photon Raman transitions, ultra-cold neutral atoms behave like charged particles in magnetic field. The Raman coupling naturally gives rise to an effective spin-orbit interaction which couples the atom’s center-of-mass motion to its selected pseudo-spin degrees of freedom. Combined with unprecedented controllability of interactions, geometry, disorder strength, spectroscopy, and high resolution measurement of momentum distribution, etc., we are truly in an exciting era of ful- filling and going beyond Richard Feynman’s vision of realizing quantum simulators to better understand the quantum mechanical nature of the universe, manifested immensely in the ultra-cold regimes. In this dissertation, we present a collection of theoretical progresses made by the doctoral candidate and his colleagues and collaborators. From the past few years of work, we mainly address three aspects of the synthetic spin-orbit and light field induced coupling in ultracold quantum gases: a) The ground-state physics of single- particle system, two-body bound states, and many-body systems, all of which are subjected to spin-orbit coupling originated from synthetic gauge potentials; b) The symmetry breaking, topological phase transition and quench dynamics, which are conveniently offered by the realized experimental setup; c) The proposal and impli- cations of light field induced dynamical spin-orbit coupling for atoms inside optical cavity. Our work represents an important advancement of theoretical understanding to the active research frontier of ultra-cold atom physics with spin-orbit coupling.
Atomtronics, a technique to control atoms for an application of devices, has been studied in recent years.The purpose of this thesis is to propose a novel method to control atoms for the application to the atomtronics.To achieve this purpose, we use a spin current in a spin-orbit (SO) coupled cold atoms.The spin current, that is a counterflow of particles with different spins, has attracted attention as a method to control electrons.On the other hand, the artificial SO coupled cold atoms were experimentally realized in 2011 and have been studied theoretically and experimentally.We can expect that a spin current can be formed in the SO coupled cold atoms because the SO coupling is known to induce a spin current and controlled because the cold atoms have various experimentally controllable parameters.However, little has been studied so far on the spin current in the cold atom.Therefore, we studied novel controllability of the spin current in the SO coupled cold atom.An SO coupled Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) was experimentally realized in 2011 and then an SO coupled degenerate fermions became available in 2012.In these systems, since the SO coupling was engineered in a neutral atom by dressing two atomic spin states with a pair of Raman lasers and an external magnetic field, it is called artificial SO coupling.In addition, some parameters such as intensity of the SO coupling can be experimentally tuned by the lasers and the external magnetic field in the artificial SO coupled cold atoms.Therefore, by investigating parameter dependence of the spin currents, we reveal controllability of the atoms in the artificial SO coupled Bose and Fermi systems.As a result, in the SO coupled Bose system, the spin current changes discontinuously and non-smoothly across the phase boundaries, while in the SO coupled Fermi system, the spin current changes continuously and smoothly at zero temperature.On the other hand, Bose-Fermi mixture was experimentally realized and have been studied from different viewpoints.Therefore, we can expect to realize an artificial SO coupled Bose-Fermi mixture in near future.In this system, since atoms of different quantum statistics coexist under an influence of the SO coupling, novel phenomena can be expected.Based on these ideas, we investigate a ground state and a spin current in a mixture of fermions and SO coupled bosons.The ground states are calculated in the SO coupled Bose-Fermi mixture with high density or low density of the atoms by using a variational method and some approximations such as tight-binding approximation.For the high density, the fermions have a large influence on the Bose system, while, for the low density, the fermions have little influence although the relative amounts of the bosons and the fermions are comparable in the two cases.In addition, we show that the spin current of the i
Cold atoms with laser-induced spin-orbit (SO) interactions provide promising platforms to explore novel quantum physics, in particular the exotic topological phases, beyond natural conditions of solids. The past several years have witnessed important progresses in both theory and experiment in the study of SO coupling and novel quantum states for ultracold atoms. Here we review the physics of the SO coupled quantum gases, focusing on the latest theoretical and experimental progresses of realizing SO couplings beyond one-dimension (1D), and the further investigation of novel topological quantum phases in such systems, including the topological insulating phases and topological superfluids. A pedagogical introduction to the SO coupling for ultracold atoms and topological quantum phases is presented. We show that the so-called optical Raman lattice schemes, which combine the creation of the conventional optical lattice and Raman lattice with topological stability, can provide minimal methods with high experimental feasibility to realize 1D to 3D SO couplings. The optical Raman lattices exhibit novel intrinsic symmetries, which enable the natural realization of topological phases belonging to different symmetry classes, with the topology being detectable through minimal measurement strategies. We introduce how the non-Abelian Majorana modes emerge in the SO coupled superfluid phases which can be topologically nontrivial or trivial, for which a few fundamental theorems are presented and discussed. The experimental schemes for achieving non-Abelian superfluid phases are given. Finally, we point out the future important issues in this rapidly growing research field.