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Frontiers of Physics

Two-body physics in quasi-low-dimensional atomic gases under spin–orbit coupling

Jingkun Wang, Wei Yi, Wei Zhang

Published Jan 5, 2016• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

One of the most dynamic directions in ultracold atomic gas research is the study of low-dimensional physics in quasi-low-dimensional geometries, where atoms are confined in strongly anisotropic traps. Recently, interest has significantly intensified with the realization of synthetic spin–orbit coupling (SOC). As a first step toward understanding the SOC effect in quasi-low-dimensional systems, the solution of two-body problems in different trapping geometries and different types of SOC has attracted great attention in the past few years. In this review, we discuss both the scattering-state and the bound-state solutions of two-body problems in quasi-one and quasi-two dimensions. We show that the degrees of freedom in tightly confined dimensions, in particular with the presence of SOC, may significantly affect system properties. Specifically, in a quasi-one-dimensional atomic gas, a one-dimensional SOC can shift the positions of confinement-induced resonances whereas, in quasitwo- dimensional gases, a Rashba-type SOC tends to increase the two-body binding energy, such that more excited states in the tightly confined direction are occupied and the system is driven further away from a purely two-dimensional gas. The effects of the excited states can be incorporated by adopting an effective low-dimensional Hamiltonian having the form of a two-channel model. With the bare parameters fixed by two-body solutions, this effective Hamiltonian leads to qualitatively different many-body properties compared to a purely low-dimensional model.

DOI
10.1007/s11467-015-0529-2

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•Jan 1, 2015•1 citation
One of the most dynamic directions in ultracold atomic gas research is the study of low-dimensional physics in quasi-low-dimensional geometries, where atoms are confined in strongly anisotropic traps. Recently, interest has significantly intensified with the realization of synthetic spin–orbit coupling (SOC). As a first step toward understanding the SOC effect in quasi-low-dimensional systems, the solution of two-body problems in different trapping geometries and different types of SOC has attracted great attention in the past few years. In this review, we discuss both the scattering-state and the bound-state solutions of two-body problems in quasi-one and quasi-two dimensions. We show that the degrees of freedom in tightly confined dimensions, in particular with the presence of SOC, may significantly affect system properties. Specifically, in a quasi-one-dimensional atomic gas, a one-dimensional SOC can shift the positions of confinement-induced resonances whereas, in quasitwo- dimensional gases, a Rashba-type SOC tends to increase the two-body binding energy, such that more excited states in the tightly confined direction are occupied and the system is driven further away from a purely two-dimensional gas. The effects of the excited states can be incorporated by adopting an effective low-dimensional Hamiltonian having the form of a two-channel model. With the bare parameters fixed by two-body solutions, this effective Hamiltonian leads to qualitatively different many-body properties compared to a purely low-dimensional model.
We investigate the low-energy scattering and bound states of two two-component fermionic atoms in pure two-dimensional (2D) and quasi-2D confinements with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We find that the SOC qualitatively changes the behavior of the 2D scattering amplitude in the low-energy limit. For quasi-2D systems we obtain the analytic expression for the effective 2D scattering amplitude and the algebraic equations for the two-atom bound-state energy. We further derive the effective 2D contact potential for the interaction between ultracold atoms in the quasi-2D confinement. This effective potential can be used in the research on many-body physics of quasi-2D ultracold Fermi gases with Rashba SOC.
We investigate the properties of a spin-orbit coupled quasi-two-dimensional Fermi gas with tunable sss-wave interaction between the two spin species. By analyzing the two-body bound state, we find that the population of the excited states in the tightly confined axial direction can be significant when the two-body binding energy becomes comparable to or exceeds the axial confinement. Since the Rashba spin-orbit coupling that we study here tends to enhance the two-body binding energy, this effect can become prominent at unitarity or even on the BCS side of the Feshbach resonance. To study the impact of these excited modes along the third dimension, we adopt an effective two-dimensional Hamiltonian in the form of a two-channel model, where the dressed molecules in the closed channel consist of the conventional Feshbach molecules as well as the excited states occupation in the axial direction. With properly renormalized interactions between atoms and dressed molecules, we find that both the density distribution and the phase structure in the trap can be significantly modified near a wide Feshbach resonance. In particular, the stability region of the topological superfluid phase is increased. Our findings provide a proper description for a quasi-two-dimensional Fermi gas under spin-orbit coupling, and are helpful for the experimental search for the topological superfluid phase in ultracold Fermi gases.
In a recent experiment, a two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (SOC) was realized for fermions in the continuum [Nat. Phys. 12, 540 (2016)], which represents an important step forward in the study of synthetic gauge fields using cold atoms. In the experiment it was shown that a Raman-induced two-dimensional SOC exists in the dressed-state basis close to a Dirac point of the single-particle spectrum. By contrast, the short-range interatomic interactions of the system are typically expressed in the hyperfine-spin basis. The interplay between synthetic SOC and interactions can potentially lead to interesting few- and many-body phenomena but has so far eluded theoretical attention. Here we study in detail properties of two-body bound states of such a system. We find that, due to the competition between SOC and interaction, the stability region of the two-body bound state is in general reduced. Particularly, the threshold of the lowest two-body bound state is shifted to a positive, SOC-dependent scattering length. Furthermore, the center-of-mass momentum of the lowest two-body bound state becomes nonzero, suggesting the emergence of Fulde-Ferrell pairing states in a many-body setting. Our results reveal the critical difference between the experimentally realized two-dimensional SOC and the more symmetric Rashba or Dresselhaus SOCs in an interacting system, paving the way for future characterizations of topological superfluid states in the experimentally relevant systems.
We investigate the low-energy scattering and bound states of two two-component fermionic atoms in pure two-dimensional (2D) and quasi-2D confinements with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We find that the SOC qualitatively changes the behavior of the 2D scattering amplitude in the low-energy limit. For quasi-2D systems we obtain the analytic expression for the effective-2D scattering amplitude and the algebraic equations for the two-atom bound state energy. Based on these results, we further derive the effective 2D interaction potential between two ultracold atoms in the quasi-2D confinement with Rashba SOC. These results are crucial for the control of the 2D effective physics in quasi-2D geometry via the confinement intensity and the atomic three-dimensional scattering length.
We derive one-dimensional effective Hamiltonians for spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases confined in quasi-one-dimensional trapping potentials. For an energy regime around the two-body bound-state energy, the effective Hamiltonian takes a two-channel form, where the populations in transverse excited levels are described by dressed molecules in the closed channel. For an energy regime slightly above the continuum threshold, the effective Hamiltonian takes a single-channel form, where low-energy physics is governed by the one-dimensional interacting strength determined by three-dimensional scattering length and transverse confinement. We further discuss the effect of spin-orbit coupling and effective Zeeman field on the position of confinement-induced resonances and show that these resonances can be understood as Feshbach resonances between the threshold of the transverse ground state and the two-body bound state associated with the transverse excited states. We expect that the shift of confinement-induced resonances can be observed under present experimental technology at attainable temperatures.
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.