We study beyond-mean-field properties of interacting spin-1 Bose gases with synthetic Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling at low energies. We derive a many-body Hamiltonian following a tight-binding approximation in quasimomentum space, where the effective spin dependence of the collisions that emerge from spin-orbit coupling leads to dominant correlated tunneling processes that couple the different bound states. We discuss the properties of the spectrum of the derived Hamiltonian and its experimental signatures. In a certain region of the parameter space, the system becomes integrable, and its dynamics becomes analogous to that of a spin-1 condensate with spin-dependent collisions. Remarkably, we find that such dynamics can be observed in existing experimental setups through quench experiments that are robust against magnetic fluctuations.
We study beyond-mean-field properties of interacting spin-1 Bose gases with synthetic Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling at low energies. We derive a many-body Hamiltonian following a tight-binding approximation in quasimomentum space, where the effective spin dependence of the collisions that emerge from spin-orbit coupling leads to dominant correlated tunneling processes that couple the different bound states. We discuss the properties of the spectrum of the derived Hamiltonian and its experimental signatures. In a certain region of the parameter space, the system becomes integrable, and its dynamics becomes analogous to that of a spin-1 condensate with spin-dependent collisions. Remarkably, we find that such dynamics can be observed in existing experimental setups through quench experiments that are robust against magnetic fluctuations.
In spinor Bose-Einstein condensates, spin-changing collisions are a remarkable proxy to coherently realize macroscopic many-body quantum states. These processes have been, e.g., exploited to generate entanglement, to study dynamical quantum phase transitions, and proposed for realizing nematic phases in atomic condensates. In the same systems dressed by Raman beams, the coupling between spin and momentum induces a spin dependence in the scattering processes taking place in the gas. Here we show that, at weak couplings, such modulation of the collisions leads to an effective Hamiltonian which is equivalent to the one of an artificial spinor gas with spin-changing collisions that are tunable with the Raman intensity. By exploiting this dressed-basis description, we propose a robust protocol to coherently drive the spin-orbit-coupled condensate into the ferromagnetic stripe phase via crossing a quantum phase transition of the effective low-energy model in an excited state.
The recent realization of synthetic spin-orbit coupling represents an outstanding achievement in the physics of ultracold quantum gases. In this review we explore the properties of a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate with equal Rashba and Dresselhaus strengths. This system presents a rich phase diagram, which exhibits a tricritical point separating a zero-momentum phase, a spin-polarized plane-wave phase, and a stripe phase. In the stripe phase translational invariance is spontaneously broken, in analogy with supersolids. Spin-orbit coupling also strongly affects the dynamics of the system. In particular, the excitation spectrum exhibits intriguing features, including the suppression of the sound velocity, the emergence of a roton minimum in the plane-wave phase, and the appearance of a double gapless band structure in the stripe phase. Finally, we discuss a combined procedure to make the stripes visible and stable, thus allowing for a direct experimental detection.
The dissertation explores the effects of synthetic spin-orbit coupling on the behaviour of quantum gases in several different contexts. We first study realistic methods to create vortices in spin-orbit-coupled (SOC) Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). We propose two different methods to induce thermodynamically stable static vortex configurations: (1) to rotate both the Raman lasers and the anisotropic trap; and (2) to impose a synthetic Abelian field on top of synthetic spin-orbit interactions. We solve the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for several experimentally relevant regimes and find new interesting effects such as spatial separation of left- and right-moving spin-orbit-coupled condensates, and the appearance of unusual vortex arrangements. Next we consider cold atoms in an optical lattice with synthetic SOC in the Mott-insulator regime. We calculate the parameters of the corresponding tight-binding model and derive the low-energy spin Hamiltonian which is a combination of Heisenberg model, quantum compass model and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We find that the Hamiltonian supports a rich classical phase diagram with collinear, spiral and vortex phases. Next we study the time evolution of the magnetization in a Rashba spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gas, starting from a fully-polarized initial state. We model the dynamics using a Boltzmann equation, which we solve in the Hartree-Fock approximation. The resulting non-linear system of equations gives rise to three distinct dynamical regimes controlled by the ratio of interaction and spin-orbit-coupling strength λ: for small λ, the magnetization decays to zero. For intermediate λ, it displays undamped oscillations about zero and for large λ, a partially magnetized state is dynamically stabilized. Motivated by an interesting stripe phase which appears in BEC with SOC [Li et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 225301 (2011)], we study the finite-temperature phase diagram of a pseudospin-1/2 Bose gas with contact interactions. We show that strong inter-spin interactions can lead to the appearance of magnetically ordered phases at temperatures above the superfluid transition. For the case of inter-spin attraction, we also discuss the possibility of a bosonic analogue of the Cooper-paired phase, however this state is not energetically favourable. We extend our calculations to a spin-orbit-coupled Bose gas to investigate the possibility of stripe ordering in the normal phase. However, within our approximations, we do not find an instability towards stripe formation. Finally, we consider a two-dimensional Bose gas at zero temperature with an underlying quartic single-particle dispersion in one spatial direction. This Hamiltonian can be realized using the NIST scheme of spin-orbit coupling [Y.-J. Lin, K. Jimenez-Garcia, and I. B. Spielman, Nature 471, 83 (2011)], or using the shaken lattice scheme of Parker et al. [C. V. Parker, L.-C. Ha and C. Chin, Nature Physics 9, 769 (2013)]. By numerically comparing energies of various trial wave-functions, we show that, at low densities, the ground state is strongly correlated, in contrast to a typical mean-field BEC. The trial wave-function with the lowest energy is of Jastrow-type and it describes a state with finite, but strongly reduced, condensate fraction.
We theoretically study an interacting few-body system of Rashba spin-orbit-coupled two-component Bose gases confined in a harmonic trapping potential. We solve the interacting Hamiltonian at large Rashba coupling strengths using an exact-diagonalization scheme, and obtain the ground-state phase diagram for a range of interatomic interactions and particle numbers. At small particle numbers, we observe that the bosons condense to an array of topological states with n+1/2 quantum angular momentum vortex configurations, where n=0,1,2,3,.... At large particle numbers, we observe two distinct regimes: at weaker-interaction strengths, we obtain ground states with topological and symmetry properties that are consistent with mean-field theory computations; at stronger-interaction strengths, we report the emergence of strongly correlated ground states.
We consider a spin-orbit coupled configuration of spin-1/2 interacting bosons with equal Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings. The phase diagram of the system at T=0 is discussed with special emphasis on the role of the interaction treated in the mean-field approximation. For a critical value of the density and of the Raman coupling we predict the occurrence of a characteristic tricritical point separating the spin mixed, the phase separated, and the zero momentum states of the Bose gas. The corresponding quantum phases are investigated analyzing the momentum distribution, the longitudinal and transverse spin polarization, and the emergence of density fringes. The effect of harmonic trapping as well as the role of the breaking of spin symmetry in the interaction Hamiltonian are also discussed.