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arXiv:1904.01635 · Physical Review Letters

Nematic-Orbit Coupling and Nematic Density Waves in Spin-1 Condensates

Di Lao, Chandra Raman, Carlos A. R. Sá de Melo

Published Apr 29, 2020• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose the creation of artificial nematic-orbit coupling in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates, in analogy with spin-orbit coupling. Using a suitably designed microwave chip, the quadratic Zeeman shift, normally uniform in space, can be made to be spatiotemporally varying, leading to a coupling between spatial and nematic degrees of freedom. A phase diagram is explored where three quantum phases with the nematic order emerge: easy axis, easy plane with single-well structure, and easy plane with double-well structure in momentum space. By including spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions, we also obtain the low energy excitation spectra in these three phases. Last, we show that the nematic-orbit coupling leads to a periodic nematic density modulation in relation to the period λ_{T} of the cosinusoidal quadratic Zeeman term. Our results point to the rich possibilities for manipulation of tensorial degrees of freedom in ultracold gases without requiring Raman lasers, and therefore, obviating light-scattering induced heating.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.124.173203

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We propose the creation of artificial nematic-orbit coupling in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates, in analogy with spin-orbit coupling. Using a suitably designed microwave chip, the quadratic Zeeman shift, normally uniform in space, can be made to be spatiotemporally varying, leading to a coupling between spatial and nematic degrees of freedom. A phase diagram is explored where three quantum phases with the nematic order emerge: easy axis, easy plane with single-well structure, and easy plane with double-well structure in momentum space. By including spin-dependent and spin-independent interactions, we also obtain the low energy excitation spectra in these three phases. Last, we show that the nematic-orbit coupling leads to a periodic nematic density modulation in relation to the period λ_{T} of the cosinusoidal quadratic Zeeman term. Our results point to the rich possibilities for manipulation of tensorial degrees of freedom in ultracold gases without requiring Raman lasers, and therefore, obviating light-scattering induced heating.
We theoretically establish the mean-field phase diagram of a homogeneous spin-1, spin-orbit-coupled Bose gas as a function of the spin-dependent interaction parameter, the Raman coupling strength, and the quadratic Zeeman shift. We find that the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and spin-dependent interactions leads to the occurrence of ferromagnetic or ferronematic phases which also break translational symmetry. For weak Raman coupling, increasing attractive spin-dependent interactions (as in 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb or 7Li^{7}\mathrm{Li}7Li) induces a transition from a uniform to a stripe XYXYXY ferromagnet (with no nematic order). For repulsive spin-dependent interactions (as in 23Na^{23}\mathrm{Na}23Na), however, we find a transition from an XYXYXY spin spiral phase ($\ensuremath{\langle}{S}_{z}\ensuremath{\rangle}=0$ and uniform total density) with uniaxial nematic order to a biaxial ferronematic, where the total density, spin vector, and nematic director oscillate in real space. We investigate the stability of these phases against the quadratic Zeeman effect, which generally tends to favor uniform phases with either ferromagnetic or nematic order but not both. We discuss the relevance of our results to ongoing experiments on spin-orbit-coupled, spinor Bose gases.
We present a variational study of the spin-1 Bose gases in a harmonic trap with three-dimensional spin–orbit (SO) coupling of Weyl type. For weak SO coupling, we treat the single-particle ground states as the form of perturbational harmonic oscillator states in the lowest total angular momentum manifold with j = 1, m j = 1, 0, −1. When the two-body interaction is considered, we set the trail order parameter as the superposition of three degenerate single-particle ground-states and the weight coefficients are determined by minimizing the energy functional. Two ground state phases, namely the magnetic and the nematic phases, are identified depending on the spin-independent and the spin-dependent interactions. Unlike the non-SO-coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate for which the phase boundary between the magnetic and the nematic phase lies exactly at zero spin-dependent interaction, the boundary is modified by the SO-coupling. We find the magnetic phase is featured with phase-separated density distributions, 3D skyrmion-like spin textures and competing magnetic and biaxial nematic orders, while the nematic phase is featured with miscible density distributions, zero magnetization and spatially modulated uniaxial nematic order. The emergence of higher spin order creates new opportunities for exploring spin-tensor-related physics in SO coupled superfluid.
These lecture notes provide an introduction to Bose-Einstein condensates with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling. Owing to the interplay between the peculiar single-particle dispersion, featuring a double-minimum structure, and the two-body interaction, these systems possess a complex phase diagram. Three different quantum phases can be observed, i.e., a stripe, a plane-wave, and a single-minimum phase, each characterized by different broken symmetries. The condensate dynamics is also significantly affected by the spin-orbit coupling, as revealed by the behavior of the Bogoliubov spectrum in infinite systems and the behavior of the discretized collective mode frequencies in trapped configurations, especially close to the phase transitions. In turn, the superfluid and rotational properties are also deeply modified by the coupling between the motional and spin degree of freedom. Finally, a special attention is devoted to the stripe phase and its supersolid character, which can be clearly revealed by the study of its dynamic features.
We study the zero-temperature phase diagram of a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate of spin 1, with equally weighted Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings. Depending on the antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic nature of the interactions, we find three kinds of striped phases with qualitatively different behaviors in the modulations of the density profiles. Phase transitions to the zero-momentum and the plane-wave phases can be induced in experiments by independently varying the Raman coupling strength and the quadratic Zeeman field. The properties of these transitions are investigated in detail, and the emergence of tricritical points, which are the direct consequence of the spin-dependent interactions, is explicitly discussed.
Superstripe phases in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), possessing both crystalline structure and superfluidity, open a new avenue for exploring exotic quantum matters---supersolids. However, conclusive detection and further exploration of a superstripe is still challenging in experiments because of its short period, low visibility, fragility against magnetic-field fluctuation, or short lifetime. Here we propose a scheme in a spin-orbit coupled BEC which overcomes these obstacles and generates a robust magnetic superstripe phase, with only spin-density (no total density) modulation due to the magnetic translational symmetry, ready for direct real-space observation. In the scheme, two hyperfine spin states are individually Raman coupled with a largely detuned third state, which induce a momentum-space separation between two lower band dispersions, yielding an effective spin-1/2 system with tunable spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman fields. Without effective Zeeman fields, spin-dependent interaction dominates, yielding a magnetic superstripe phase with a long tunable period and high visibility. Our scheme provides a platform for observing and exploring exotic properties of superstripe phases as well as novel physics with tunable spin-orbit coupling.
We propose a simple model with spin and orbit angular momentum coupling in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate, where three internal atomic states are Raman coupled by a pair of copropagating Laguerre-Gaussian beams. The resulting Raman transition imposes a transfer of orbital angular momentum between photons and the condensate in a spin-dependent way. Focusing on a regime where the single-particle ground state is nearly threefold degenerate, we show that the weak interatomic interaction in the condensate produces a rich phase diagram, and that a many-body Rabi oscillation between two quantum phases can be induced by a sudden quench of the quadratic Zeeman shift. We carried out our calculations using both a variational method and a full numerical method, and found excellent agreement.