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arXiv:2110.07094

Thermalization in a Spin-Orbit coupled Bose gas by enhanced spin Coulomb drag

Brown, D. J., Maarten D. Hoogerland

Published Oct 14, 2021• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

An important component of the structure of the atom, the effects of spin-orbit coupling are present in many sub-fields of physics. Most of these effects are present continuously. We present a detailed study of the dynamics of changing the spin-orbit coupling in an ultra-cold Bose gas, coupling the motion of the atoms to their spin. We find that the spin-orbit coupling greatly increases the damping towards equilibrium. We interpret this damping as spin drag, which is enhanced by spin-orbit coupling rate, scaled by a remarkable factor of $8.9(6)$~s. We also find that spin-orbit coupling lowers the final temperature of the Bose gas after thermalization.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2110.07094

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An important component of the structure of the atom, the effects of spin-orbit coupling are present in many sub-fields of physics. Most of these effects are present continuously. We present a detailed study of the dynamics of changing the spin-orbit coupling in an ultra-cold Bose gas, coupling the motion of the atoms to their spin. We find that the spin-orbit coupling greatly increases the damping towards equilibrium. We interpret this damping as spin drag, which is enhanced by spin-orbit coupling rate, scaled by a remarkable factor of 8.9(6)8.9(6)8.9(6)~s. We also find that spin-orbit coupling lowers the final temperature of the Bose gas after thermalization.
Abstract We experimentally investigate the quench dynamics of a spin–orbit–coupled (SOC) Bose–Einstein condensate and its subsequent thermalization. We measure the damping of momentum oscillations and find that the damping rate increases with SOC strength. Comparing the observed damping to theoretical estimates of spin drag in the absence of SOC, we find comparable order-of-magnitude scales, establishing a reference for dissipative processes involving thermal atoms. We emphasize that this comparison provides a baseline rather than a quantitative description of the SOC system. In addition, we directly measure the final temperature after relaxation and observe a decrease with increasing coupling strength. These results provide experimentally constrained benchmarks for finite-temperature theories of non-equilibrium dynamics in SOC quantum gases.
Spin-orbit coupling is predicted to have a dramatic effect on thermal properties of a two-component atomic Bose gas. We show that in three spatial dimensions it lowers the critical temperature of condensation and enhances thermal depletion of the condensate fraction. In two dimensions we show that spin-orbit coupling destroys superfluidity at any finite temperature, modifying dramatically the cerebrated Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless scenario. We explain this by the increase of the number of low-energy states induced by spin-orbit coupling, enhancing the role of quantum fluctuations.
In spintronics the active control and manipulation of spin currents is studied in solid-state systems. Opposed to charge currents, spin currents are strongly damped due to collisions between different spin carriers in addition to relaxation due to impurities and lattice vibrations. The phenomenon of relaxation of spin currents is called spin drag. Here we study spin drag in ultra-cold bosonic atoms deep in the hydrodynamic regime and show that spin drag is the dominant damping mechanism for spin currents in this system. By increasing the phase space density we find that spin drag is enhanced in the quantum regime by more than a factor of two due to Bose stimulation, which is in agreement with recent theoretical predictions and, surprisingly, already occurs considerably above the phase transition.
The spin dynamics of a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensed binary mixture of sodium atoms is experimentally investigated at finite temperature. In the collisional regime the motion of the thermal component is shown to be damped because of spin drag, while the two condensates exhibit a counterflow oscillation without friction, thereby providing direct evidence for spin superfluidity. Results are also reported in the collisionless regime where the spin components of both the condensate and thermal part oscillate without damping, their relative motion being driven by a mean-field effect. We also measure the static polarizability of the condensed and thermal parts and we find a large increase of the condensate polarizability with respect to the T=0 value, in agreement with the predictions of theory.
In this Thesis, we show that in a rotating two-component Bose mixture, the spin drag between the two different spin species shows a Hall effect. This spin drag Hall effect can be observed experimentally by studying the out-of-phase dipole mode of the mixture. We determine the damping of this mode due to spin drag as a function of temperature. We find that due to Bose stimulation there is a strong enhancement of the damping for temperatures close to the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation. We also show the difference between spin drag in Bose gases, Fermi gases and Bose-Fermi mixtures. Furthermore, we investigate coupled spin and heat transport in Bose gases, and calculate the associated coefficients. Finally, we calculate the power spectrum resulting from spin current fluctuations in a Bose gas.
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