Emergence of topological and strongly correlated ground states in trapped Rashba spin-orbit-coupled Bose gases
B. Ramachandhran, Hui Hu, Han Pu
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.
arXiv:1301.0800•Physical Review A•Mar 26, 2013•21 citations