{\em Zitterbewegung} in Spin-Orbit Coupled Systems and Ehrenfest's Theorem
Strongly Correlated Electrons
2018-08-17 v1
Abstract
We use Ehrenfest's theorem to provide a particularly simple derivation of the {\em zitterbewegung} in the dynamics of initial Gaussian wave packets in a two-dimensional electron gas. For initial packets which are very wide in the -direction, the {\em zitterbewegung} is only in the -component of the velocity. We extend our Ehrenfest theorem based calculation to the spin-orbit coupled spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to predict that there can be {\em zitterbewegung} in the -component of the velocity in this situation driven by a combination of the nonlinear interaction in the condensate and the splitting due to the spin-orbit coupling.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1808.05397,
title = {{\em Zitterbewegung} in Spin-Orbit Coupled Systems and Ehrenfest's Theorem},
author = {Debabrata Sinha and Jayanta K. Bhattacharjee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.05397},
year = {2018}
}