Hu H, Ramachandhran B, Pu H, Liu XJ. Spin-orbit coupled weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensates in harmonic traps.
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 2012;
108:010402. [PMID:
22304247 DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.108.010402]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2011] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
We investigate theoretically the phase diagram of a spin-orbit coupled Bose gas in two-dimensional harmonic traps. We show that at strong spin-orbit coupling the single-particle spectrum decomposes into different manifolds separated by ℏω{⊥}, where ω{⊥} is the trapping frequency. For a weakly interacting gas, quantum states with Skyrmion lattice patterns emerge spontaneously and preserve either parity symmetry or combined parity-time-reversal symmetry. These phases can be readily observed in a spin-orbit coupled gas of ^{87}Rb atoms in a highly oblate trap.
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