Emergence of Topological and Strongly Correlated Ground States in trapped Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose Gases

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 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.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Cavity-Assisted Dynamical Spin-Orbit Coupling in Cold Atoms

We consider ultracold atoms subjected to a cavity-assisted two-photon Raman transition. The Raman coupling gives rise to effective spin-orbit interaction which couples atom's center-of-mass motion to its pseudospin degrees of freedom. Meanwhile, the cavity photon is dynamically affected by the atom. This feedback between atom and photon leads to a dramatic modification of the atomic dispersion relation, and further leads to dynamical instability of the system. We propose to detect the change of cavity photon number as a direct way to demonstrate dynamical instability.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Controlling Condensate Collapse and Expansion with an Optical Feshbach Resonance

We demonstrate control of the collapse and expansion of an 88Sr Bose-Einstein condensate using an optical Feshbach resonance (OFR) near the 1S0-3P1 intercombination transition at 689 nm. Significant changes in dynamics are caused by modifications of scattering length by up to +- ?10a_bg, where the background scattering length of 88Sr is a_bg = -2a0 (1a0 = 0.053 nm). Changes in scattering length are monitored through changes in the size of the condensate after a time-of-flight measurement. Because the background scattering length is close to zero, blue detuning of the OFR laser with respect to a photoassociative resonance leads to increased interaction energy and a faster condensate expansion, whereas red detuning triggers a collapse of the condensate. The results are modeled with the time-dependent nonlinear Gross-Pitaevskii equation.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Excitation spectrum and instability of a two-species Bose-Einstein condensate

We numerically calculate the density profile and excitation spectrum of a two-species Bose-Einstein condensate for the parameters of recent experiments. We find that the ground state density profile of this system becomes unstable in certain parameter regimes, which leads to a phase transition to a new stable state. This state displays spontaneously broken cylindrical symmetry. This behavior is reflected in the excitation spectrum: as we approach the phase transition point, the lowest excitation frequency goes to zero, indicating the onset of instability in the density profile. Following the phase transition, this frequency rises again.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, uses REVTe

Half-quantum vortex state in a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate

We investigate theoretically the condensate state and collective excitations of a two-component Bose gas in two-dimensional harmonic traps subject to isotropic Rashba spin-orbit coupling. In the weakly interacting regime when the inter-species interaction is larger than the intra-species interaction ($g_{\uparrow\downarrow}>g$), we find that the condensate ground state has a half-quantum-angular-momentum vortex configuration with spatial rotational symmetry and skyrmion-type spin texture. Upon increasing the interatomic interaction beyond a threshold $g_{c}$, the ground state starts to involve higher-order angular momentum components and thus breaks the rotational symmetry. In the case of $g_{\uparrow\downarrow}<g$, the condensate becomes unstable towards the superposition of two degenerate half-quantum vortex states. Both instabilities (at $g>g_{c}$ and $g_{\uparrow\downarrow}<g$) can be determined by solving the Bogoliubov equations for collective density oscillations of the half-quantum vortex state, and by analyzing the softening of mode frequencies. We present the phase diagram as functions of the interatomic interactions and the spin-orbit coupling. In addition, we directly simulate the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation to examine the dynamical properties of the system. Finally, we investigate the stability of the half-quantum vortex state against both the trap anisotropy and anisotropy in the spin-orbit coupling term.Comment: 13 pages, 18 figure

Finite-Temperature Study of Bose-Fermi Superfluid Mixtures

Ultra-cold atom experiments offer the unique opportunity to study mixing of different types of superfluid states. Our interest is in superfluid mixtures comprising particles with different statistics- Bose and Fermi. Such scenarios occur naturally, for example, in dense QCD matter. Interestingly, cold atomic experiments are performed in traps with finite spatial extent, thus critically destabilizing the occurrence of various homogeneous phases. Critical to this analysis is the understanding that the trapped system can undergo phase separation, resulting in a unique situation where phase transition in either species (bosons or fermions) can overlap with the phase separation between possible phases. In the present work, we illustrate how this intriguing interplay manifests in an interacting 2-species atomic mixture - one bosonic and another fermionic with two spin components - within a realistic trap configuration. We further show that such interplay of transitions can render the nature of the ground state to be highly sensitive to the experimental parameters and the dimensionality of the system.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures; Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.