In the first part we discuss how the BEC picture for magnons is modified by anisotropies induced by spin-orbit coupling. In particular, we focus on the effects of antisymmetric spin interactions and/or a staggered component of the g (gyromagnetic) tensor. Such terms lead to a gapped quasiparticle spectrum and a non-zero condensate density for all temperatures so that no phase transition occurs. We contrast this to the effect of crystal field anisotropies which are also induced by spin-orbit coupling. In the second part, we study the field-induced magnetic ordering in TlCuCl 3 on a quantitative level. We show that the usual BEC picture does not allow for a good description of the experimental magnetisation data and argue that antisymmetric spin interactions and/or a staggered g tensor component are still crucial, although both are expected to be tiny in this compound due to crystal symmetries. Including this type of interaction, we obtain excellent agreement with experimental data.
In the first part we discuss how the BEC picture for magnons is modified by anisotropies induced by spin-orbit coupling. In particular, we focus on the effects of antisymmetric spin interactions and/or a staggered component of the g (gyromagnetic) tensor. Such terms lead to a gapped quasiparticle spectrum and a non-zero condensate density for all temperatures so that no phase transition occurs. We contrast this to the effect of crystal field anisotropies which are also induced by spin-orbit coupling. In the second part, we study the field-induced magnetic ordering in TlCuCl 3 on a quantitative level. We show that the usual BEC picture does not allow for a good description of the experimental magnetisation data and argue that antisymmetric spin interactions and/or a staggered g tensor component are still crucial, although both are expected to be tiny in this compound due to crystal symmetries. Including this type of interaction, we obtain excellent agreement with experimental data.
The recent experimental realization of spin-orbit (SO) coupling for spin-1 ultracold atoms opens an interesting avenue for exploring SO-coupling-related physics in large-spin systems, which is generally unattainable in electronic materials. In this paper, we study the effects of interactions between atoms on the ground states and collective excitations of SO-coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in the presence of a spin-tensor potential. We find that ferromagnetic interaction between atoms can induce a stripe phase exhibiting in-phase or out-of-phase modulating patterns between spin-tensor and zero-spin-component density waves. We characterize the phase transitions between different phases using the spin-tensor density as well as the collective dipole motion of the BEC. We show that there exists a double maxon-roton structure in the Bogoliubov-excitation spectrum, attributed to the three band minima of the SO-coupled spin-1 BEC.
A quantised spin wave – magnon – in magnetic films can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) into two energetically degenerate lowest-energy quantum states with nonzero wave vectors ±k BEC . This corresponds to two interfering condensates forming spontaneously in momentum space. Brillouin Light Scattering studies for a microwavepumped film with submicrometer spatial resolution experimentally confirm the existence of the two wavefunctions and show that their interference results in a nonuniform ground state of the condensate with the density oscillating in space. Moreover, fork dislocations in the density fringes provide direct experimental evidence for the formation of pinned half-quantum vortices in the magnon condensate. The measured amplitude of the density oscillation implies the formation of a nonsymmetric state that corresponds to nonequal occupation of two energy minima. We discuss the experimental findings and consider the theory of magnon condensates, which includes, to leading order, the contribution from the noncondensed magnons. The effect of the noncondensed magnon cloud is to increase the contrast of the asymmetric state and to bring about the experimental measurements. Introduction Magnons are quasiparticles corresponding to quantised spin waves that describe the collective motion of spins [1]. In recent years, it has become possible to realise a BEC of magnons in two remarkably different systems: in superfluid phases of an isotope of helium – Helium-3 at ultralow temperatures [2, 3] and in ferrimagnetic insulators [4, 5, 6, 7]. In the normal, noncondensed state, these magnetic materials exhibit a magnetically ordered state with a gas of magnons whose phases are not correlated. However, once condensation occurs, spins develop phase coherence resulting in a common global frequency and phase of precession. At room temperature, ferrimagnetic insulators, such as yttrium-iron garnet (YIG) films, together with a combination of an in-plane magnetic field and microwave radiation, are required for the magnon condensation [4, 5, 6, 7]. Therefore, in analogy with exciton– polariton condensates, this provides yet another example of a BEC of quasiparticle excitations in a solid-state system. Experimental Realisation of a Bose-Einstein Condensate of Magnons in an Epitaxial YIG-film A room-temperature Bose-Einstein condensate of magnons was created in an epitaxial YIG-film using an experimental setup shown in Fig. 25.1a, which, in general, is similar to that used in our previous studies [4, 5]. Given that magnons are quasiparticle excitations, their number is not conserved and, therefore, the chemical potential is zero.
We discuss Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of magnons in magnets with predominant ferromagnetic (FM) interaction in a magnetic field H near saturation (Hc). Because Hc is independent of FM couplings, magnetic materials of this type can have small Hc which makes them promising candidates for experimental investigation of BECs. Ferromagnets with easy-plane anisotropy and antiferromagnets (AFs) containing weakly coupled FM planes or chains are discussed in detail. We observe a small effective interaction between magnons near the quantum critical point in such magnets, in contrast to the AFs with strong AF coupling previously discussed. In particular, this smallness allows us to find crossovers in the critical temperature ${T}_{c}(H)\ensuremath{\propto}{({H}_{c}\ensuremath{-}H)}^{1∕\ensuremath{\phi}}$ from $\ensuremath{\phi}=3∕2$ to $\ensuremath{\phi}=1$ in quasi-one-dimensional magnets, and from $\ensuremath{\phi}=3∕2$ to $\ensuremath{\phi}\ensuremath{\approx}1$ $({T}_{c}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ln}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{T}_{c}\ensuremath{\propto}{H}_{c}\ensuremath{-}H)$ in quasi-two-dimensional ones.
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.
Understanding the effects of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and many-body interactions on spin transport is important in condensed matter physics and spintronics. This topic has been intensively studied for spin carriers such as electrons but barely explored for charge-neutral bosonic quasiparticles (including their condensates), which hold promises for coherent spin transport over macroscopic distances. Here, we explore the effects of synthetic SOC (induced by optical Raman coupling) and atomic interactions on the spin transport in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), where the spin-dipole mode (SDM, actuated by quenching the Raman coupling) of two interacting spin components constitutes an alternating spin current. We experimentally observe that SOC significantly enhances the SDM damping while reducing the thermalization (the reduction of the condensate fraction). We also observe generation of BEC collective excitations such as shape oscillations. Our theory reveals that the SOC-modified interference, immiscibility, and interaction between the spin components can play crucial roles in spin transport.
We study systematically the quantum corrections to a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate with spin-orbit coupling. We show that quantum fluctuations, enhanced by the spin-orbit coupling, modify quantitatively the mean-field properties such as the superfluid density, spin polarizability, and sound velocity. We find that the phase boundary between the plane wave and zero momentum phases is shifted to a smaller transverse field. We also calculate the Beliaev and Landau damping rates and find that the Landau process dominates the quasiparticle decay even at low temperature.