Spin-orbit coupling has novel spin-flip symmetries, a spin-1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate owns meaningful interactions, and a toroidal trap is topologically nontrivial. We incorporate the three together and study the ground-state phase diagram in a Rashba spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate with a toroidal trap. The spin-flip symmetries give rise to two different interesting phases: persistent flows with a unit phase winding difference between three components, and necklace states with even petal number. The existing parameter regimes and properties of these phases are characterized by two-dimensional numerical calculations and an azimuthal analytical one-dimensional model.
Spin-orbit coupling has novel spin-flip symmetries, a spin-1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate owns meaningful interactions, and a toroidal trap is topologically nontrivial. We incorporate the three together and study the ground-state phase diagram in a Rashba spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate with a toroidal trap. The spin-flip symmetries give rise to two different interesting phases: persistent flows with a unit phase winding difference between three components, and necklace states with even petal number. The existing parameter regimes and properties of these phases are characterized by two-dimensional numerical calculations and an azimuthal analytical one-dimensional model.
We study the phase diagram of a Rashba spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a two-dimensional toroidal trap. In the immiscible regime we find an azimuthally periodic density distribution, with the periodicity highly tunable as a function of the spin-orbit-coupling strength and which favors an odd number of petals in each component. This allows for a wide range of states that can be created. We further show that in the miscible regime, both components possess states with persistent flows with a unit winding number difference between them and with the absolute values of these winding numbers depending on the spin-orbit-coupling strength. All features of the odd-petal and the persistent flow states can be explained using a simple but effective model.
Abstract The ground-state properties of a spin–orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in a toroidal trap are investigated. The exotic ground states, such as the necklace state, the persistent flow and even the vortex state, for the three components in the system are induced by adjustable external parameters. It is found that the petal number of the necklace states is increased with increasing the intensity of the spin–orbit coupling (SOC), and the anisotropy of the SOC can be used to control the structure of the ground states. The rotation of the condensate induced by the external field makes the densities of the three components asymmetric and tends to transform the necklace state to the persistent flow. The radius of the toroidal potential is another degree of freedom for manipulating the necklace state. In addition, the transition between the necklace state and the vortex, intermediated by the persistent flow, can be controlled by the ratio of the density-density and spin-exchange interactions. All of above results enrich our knowledge about the properties of the ground states of spin-1 BEC trapped in the toroidal trap.
Realization of spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical trap has made it possible to create a variety of topological nontrivial structures, due to the vector character of the order parameter. Recently, artificial spin-orbit coupling in the spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, owing to coupling between the spin and the center-of-mass motion of the atom, provides an unprecedented opportunity to search for novel quantum states. As is well known, the potential well in the Bose-Einstein condensate is adjustable. The toroidal trap is an important model potential because of its simplicity and richness in physics. In particular, the spinor Bose-Einstein condensate under the toroidal trap has brought an ideal platform for studying fascinating properties of a superfluid, such as persistent flow and symmetry-breaking localization. For the case of the spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate, the previous studies of the toroidal trap mainly focused on the two-component or antiferromagnetic case. However, in the presence of a toroidal trap, there remains an open question whether the combined effects of the spin-orbit coupling and rotation can produce previously unknown types of topological excitations in the ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate. In this work, by using quasi two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equations, we study the ground state structure of spin-orbit coupled rotating ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate in the toroidal trap. We concentrate on the effects of the spin-orbit coupling and the rotation on the ground states. The numerical results show that in the presence of a toroidal trap, the ground state structure is displayed as half-skyrmion chain with circular distribution. Adjusting the strength of spin-orbit coupling not only changes the number of half-skyrmion in the system, but also controls the symmetry of half-skyrmion with circular distribution. As the rotation frequency increases, the system undergoes the transitions from the plane wave to the half-skyrmion chain with circular distribution, and eventually developing the half-skyrmion phase of triangular lattice. Next, we examine the effect of spin-independent interaction on spin-orbit coupled rotating spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. As the spin-independent interaction increases, the topological defects in the condensate increase due to the variation of the local magnetic order. We also discuss the influence of well shape on the ground state structure. These topological structures can be detected via the time-of-flight absorption imaging technique. The spin-orbit coupled spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in the toroidal trap is an important quantum platform, which not only opens up a new avenue for exploring the exotic topological structures, but also is crucial for realizing the transitions among different ground states. This work paves the way for futureexploring the topological defects and the corresponding dynamical stability in quantum system subjected to the toroidal trap.
We consider the spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates with the isotropic Rashba spin-orbit coupling in a two-dimensional toroidal trap. Three types of striped phases are found in a nonrotational system, i.e., the stripe phase with the periodic density modulation along the azimuthal direction, the stripe phase with the periodic density modulation along both the azimuthal and the radial directions, and the stripe phase with the periodic density modulation along the radial direction. By adding the rotation, the condensates occupy the mF=0 component for small rotational frequency, while they occupy both the mF=1 and ${m}_{F}=\ensuremath{-}1$ components for large rotational frequency when both the relative interaction and the spin-orbit coupling are weak. For the stronger relative interaction and spin-orbit coupling, the vortices of the system are elongated along the radial direction and linked one after another. As the rotational frequency further increases, the density evolves from the elongated effect of the vortices into a laminar vortex ring.
We consider a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate with nonlocal Rydberg interactions confined in a toroidal trap. Our results show that the interplay among nonlocal Rydberg interactions, contact interactions, spin-orbit coupling, and the external toroidal trap can give rise to a rich variety of ground-state phases, such as lump necklace, chiral supersolid, standing- and plane-wave supersolid, and so on. Furthermore, we clarify the different breaking of symmetry induced by system parameters. Finally, the limiting case of a quasi-one-dimensional ring has also been investigated, and our analytical results agree well with the Gross-Pitaevskii numerical simulations. We also give an experimental protocol to observe these states in future experiments.
We investigate the ground-state structures of dipolar spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in a toroidal trap. Combined effects of dipole-dipole interaction (DDI) and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on the ground states of the system are discussed. A ground-state phase diagram is obtained as a function of the SOC and DDI strengths. As two new degrees of freedom, the DDI and SOC can be used to obtain the desired ground-state phases and to control the phase transition between various ground states. In particular, the system displays exotic topological structures and spin textures, such as half-quantum vortex, vortex string, vortex necklace, complex vortex lattice including giant vortex and hidden antivortex chains, different skyrmions, meron (half-skyrmion)-antimeron (half-antiskyrmion) necklace, and composite meron-antimeron lattice.