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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Studies of atomic spin-orbit coupling synthesized with gradient magnetic fields

Xinyu Luo, Ling-Na Wu, Ruquan Wang, Li You

Published Sep 7, 2015• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Atomic spin orbit coupling (SOC) can be synthesized with modulating gradient magnetic field (GMF). This is confirmed through studying collective dipole oscillations for a spin-1 atomic condensate in a harmonic trap after abruptly turning on SOC, and studying adiabatically adjusted equilibrium states when SOC strength is slowly ramped up. Further measurements reveal that SOC can be enhanced when the GMF modulation frequency approaches trapping frequency.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/635/2/022036

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Atomic spin orbit coupling (SOC) can be synthesized with modulating gradient magnetic field (GMF). This is confirmed through studying collective dipole oscillations for a spin-1 atomic condensate in a harmonic trap after abruptly turning on SOC, and studying adiabatically adjusted equilibrium states when SOC strength is slowly ramped up. Further measurements reveal that SOC can be enhanced when the GMF modulation frequency approaches trapping frequency.
Spin orbit coupling (SOC) for neutral atoms can be synthesized with pulsed or time modulating gradient magnetic field (GMF). This is confirmed through the studies of collective dipole oscillations for a spin-1 atomic condensate in a harmonic trap after abruptly turning on SOC and adiabatically adjusted equilibrium states when SOC strength is slowly ramped up. Further measurements reveal that SOC can be enhanced when the GMF modulation frequency approaches harmonic trap frequency. Additionally, we discuss how the technique of pulsed GMF can be used to synthesize space-period magnetic fields, or magnetic lattices.
We report the observation of synthesized spin-orbit coupling (SOC) for ultracold spin-1 (87)Rb atoms. Different from earlier experiments where a one dimensional (1D) atomic SOC of pseudo-spin-1/2 is synthesized with Raman laser fields, the scheme we demonstrate employs a gradient magnetic field (GMF) and ground-state atoms, thus is immune to atomic spontaneous emission. The strength of SOC we realize can be tuned by changing the modulation amplitude of the GMF, and the effect of the SOC is confirmed through the studies of: 1) the collective dipole oscillation of an atomic condensate in a harmonic trap after the synthesized SOC is abruptly turned on; and 2) the minimum energy state at a finite adiabatically adjusted momentum when SOC strength is slowly ramped up. The condensate coherence is found to remain very good after driven by modulating GMFs. Our scheme presents an alternative means for studying interacting many-body systems with synthesized SOC.
Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) plays an essential role in many exotic and interesting phenomena in condensed matter physics. In neutral-atom-based quantum simulations, synthetic SOC constitutes a key enabling element. The strength of SOC realized so far is limited by various reasons or constraints. This work reports tunable SOC synthesized with a gradient magnetic field (GMF) for atoms in a harmonic trap. Nearly ten-fold enhancement is observed when the GMF is modulated near the harmonic-trap resonance in comparison with the free-space situation. A theory is developed that well explains the experimental results. Our work offers a clear physical insight into and analytical understanding of how to tune the strength of atomic SOC synthesized with GMF using harmonic trap resonance.
We discuss a general scheme for creating atomic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) such as the Rashba or Dresselhaus types using magnetic-field-gradient pulses. In contrast to conventional schemes based on adiabatic center-of-mass motion with atomic internal states restricted to a dressed-state subspace, our scheme works for the complete subspace of a hyperfine-spin manifold by utilizing the coupling between the atomic magnetic moment and external magnetic fields. A space-dependent pulsed magnetic field acts as an internal-state-dependent impulse, thereby coupling the atomic internal spin with its orbital center-of-mass motion, as in the Einstein--de Haas effect. This effective coupling can be dynamically manipulated to synthesize SOC of any type (Rashba, Dresselhaus, or any linear combination thereof). Our scheme can be realized with most experimental setups of ultracold atoms and is especially suited for atoms with zero nuclear spins.
Spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the intrinsic interaction between a particle spin and its motion, is responsible for various important phenomena, ranging from atomic fine structure to topological condensed matter physics. The recent experimental breakthrough on the realization of SOC for ultra-cold atoms provides a completely new platform for exploring spin-orbit coupled superfluid physics. However, the SOC strength in the experiment is not tunable. In this report, we propose a scheme for tuning the SOC strength through a fast and coherent modulation of the laser intensities. We show that the many-body interaction between atoms, together with the tunable SOC, can drive a quantum phase transition (QPT) from spin-balanced to spin-polarized ground states in a harmonic trapped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), which resembles the long-sought Dicke QPT. We characterize the QPT using the periods of collective oscillations of the BEC, which show pronounced peaks and damping around the quantum critical point.
The spin-orbit coupling (SOC) affecting the center of mass of ultracold atoms can be simulated using a properly chosen periodic sequence of magnetic pulses. Yet such a method is generally accompanied by micromotion, which hinders precise control of atomic dynamics, thus complicating practical applications. Here we show how to bypass the micromotion emerging in the magnetically induced SOC by properly switching on and off the oscillating magnetic fields at the initial and final times. We consider the exact dynamics of the system and demonstrate that the overall dynamics can be immune to the micromotion. The exact dynamics is shown to agree well with the evolution of the system described by the slowly changing effective Floquet Hamiltonian including the SOC term. The agreement is shown to be best when the phase of the periodic driving takes a specific value for which the effect of the spin-orbit coupling is maximum.