Abstract In the presence of strong spin-independent interactions and spin-orbit coupling, we show that the spinor Bose liquid confined to one spatial dimension undergoes an interaction- or density-tuned quantum phase transition similar to one theoretically proposed for itinerant magnetic solid-state systems. The order parameter describes broken Z2 inversion symmetry, with the ordered phase accompanied by non-vanishing momentum which is generated by fluctuations of an emergent dynamical gauge field at the phase transition. This quantum phase transition has dynamical critical exponent z ≃ 2, typical of a Lifshitz transition, but is described by a nontrivial interacting fixed point. From direct numerical simulation of the microscopic model, we extract previously unknown critical exponents for this fixed point. Our model describes a realistic situation of 1D ultracold atoms with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling, establishing this system as a platform for studying exotic critical behavior of the Hertz-Millis type.
In the presence of strong spin-independent interactions and spin-orbit coupling, we show that the spinor Bose liquid confined to one spatial dimension undergoes an interaction- or density-tuned quantum phase transition similar to one theoretically proposed for itinerant magnetic solid-state systems. The order parameter describes broken
Z2 inversion symmetry, with the ordered phase accompanied by non-vanishing momentum which is generated by fluctuations of an emergent dynamical gauge field at the phase transition. This quantum phase transition has dynamical critical exponent
z≃2, typical of a Lifshitz transition, but is described by a nontrivial interacting fixed point. From direct numerical simulation of the microscopic model, we extract previously unknown critical exponents for this fixed point. Our model describes a realistic situation of 1D ultracold atoms with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling, establishing this system as a platform for studying exotic critical behavior of the Hertz-Millis type.
We realize the dynamical 1D spin-orbit coupling (SOC) of a Bose-Einstein condensate confined within an optical cavity. The SOC emerges through spin-correlated momentum impulses delivered to the atoms via Raman transitions. These are effected by classical pump fields acting in concert with the quantum dynamical cavity field. Above a critical pump power, the Raman coupling emerges as the atoms superradiantly populate the cavity mode with photons. Concomitantly, these photons cause a backaction onto the atoms, forcing them to order their spin-spatial state. This SOC-inducing superradiant Dicke phase transition results in a spinor-helix polariton condensate. We observe emergent SOC through spin-resolved atomic momentum imaging and temporal heterodyne measurement of the cavity-field emission. Dynamical SOC in quantum gas cavity QED, and the extension to dynamical gauge fields, may enable the creation of Meissner-like effects, topological superfluids, and exotic quantum Hall states in coupled light-matter systems.
Spin-orbit-coupled bosons can exhibit rich equilibrium phases at low temperature and in the presence of particle-particle interactions. In the case with a 1D synthetic spin-orbit interaction, it has been observed that the ground state of a Bose gas can be a normal phase, stripe phase, or magnetized phase in different parameter regimes. The magnetized states are doubly degenerate and consist of a many-particle two-state system. In this work, we investigate the nonequilibrium quantum dynamics by switching on a simple one-dimensional optical lattice potential as external perturbation to induce resonant couplings between the magnetized phases, and predict a quantum spin dynamics which cannot be obtained in the single-particle systems. In particular, due to particle-particle interactions, the transition of the Bose condensate from one magnetized phase to the other is forbidden when the external perturbation strength is less than a critical value, and a full transition can occur only when the perturbation exceeds such critical strength. This phenomenon manifests itself a dynamical phase transition, with the order parameter defined by the time-averaged magnetization over an oscillation period, and the critical point behavior being exactly solvable. The thermal fluctuations are also considered in detail. From numerical simulations and exact analytic studies we show that the predicted many-body effects can be well observed with the current experiments.
We describe the quantum phase transition in the
N-state chiral clock model in spatial dimension
d=1. With couplings chosen to preserve time-reversal and spatial inversion symmetries, such a model is in the universality class of recent experimental studies of the ordering of pumped Rydberg states in a one-dimensional chain of trapped ultracold alkali atoms. For such couplings and
N=3, the clock model is expected to have a direct phase transition from a gapped phase with a broken global
ZN symmetry, to a gapped phase with the
ZN symmetry restored. The transition has dynamical critical exponent $z\ensuremath{\ne}1$, and so cannot be described by a relativistic quantum field theory. We use a lattice duality transformation to map the transition onto that of a Bose gas in
d=1, involving the onset of a single-boson condensate in the background of a higher-dimensional
N-boson condensate. We present a renormalization group analysis of the strongly coupled field theory for the Bose gas transition in an expansion in $2\ensuremath{-}d$, with $4\ensuremath{-}N$ chosen to be of order $2\ensuremath{-}d$. At two-loop order, we find a regime of parameters with a renormalization group fixed point which can describe a direct phase transition. We also present numerical density-matrix renormalization group studies of lattice chiral clock and Bose gas models for
N=3, finding good evidence for a direct phase transition, and obtain estimates for
z and the correlation length exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$.
Excited-state quantum phase transitions depend on and reveal the structure of the whole spectrum of many-body systems. While they are theoretically well understood, finding suitable signatures and detecting them in actual experiments remains challenging. For instance, in spinor gases, excited-state phases have been identified and characterized through a topological order parameter that is challenging to measure in experiments. Here we propose the Raman-dressed spin-orbit-coupled gas as a novel platform to explore excited-state quantum phase transitions. In a weakly coupled regime, the dressed system is equivalent to a spinor gas with tunable spin-spin interactions. Through this equivalence we are able to identify excited-state phases in the Raman-dressed Bose gas. The phases are characterized by the behavior of the spatial density modulations, or stripes, induced by spin-orbit coupling, and can in principle be measured in current state-of-the-art experiments with ultracold atoms. Conversely, we show that the properties of the excited phase can be exploited to prepare stripe states with large and stable density modulations.
We study a novel type of quantum criticality of the Lifshitz ${\ensuremath{\varphi}}^{4}$ theory below the upper critical dimension
du=z+dc=8, where the dynamic critical exponent
z=4 and the spatial upper critical dimension
dc=4. Two fixed points, one Gaussian and the other non-Gaussian, are identified with zero and finite interaction strengths, respectively. At zero temperature the particle density exhibits different power-law dependences on the chemical potential in the weak- and strong-interaction regions. At finite temperatures, critical behaviors in the quantum disordered region are mainly controlled by the chemical potential. In contrast, in the quantum critical region critical scalings are determined by temperature. The scaling ansatz remains valid in the strong-interaction limit for the chemical potential, correlation length, and particle density, while it breaks down in the weak-interaction one. Approaching the upper critical dimension, physical quantities develop logarithmic dependence on dimensionality in the strong-interaction region. These results are applied to spin-orbit coupled bosonic systems, leading to predictions testable by future experiments.