Realization of Two-Dimensional Spin-orbit Coupling for Bose-Einstein Condensates
Abstract
Cold atoms with laser-induced spin-orbit (SO) interactions provide intriguing new platforms to explore novel quantum physics beyond natural conditions of solids. Recent experiments demonstrated the one-dimensional (1D) SO coupling for boson and fermion gases. However, realization of 2D SO interaction, a much more important task, remains very challenging. Here we propose and experimentally realize, for the first time, 2D SO coupling and topological band with Rb degenerate gas through a minimal optical Raman lattice scheme, without relying on phase locking or fine tuning of optical potentials. A controllable crossover between 2D and 1D SO couplings is studied, and the SO effects and nontrivial band topology are observed by measuring the atomic cloud distribution and spin texture in the momentum space. Our realization of 2D SO coupling with advantages of small heating and topological stability opens a broad avenue in cold atoms to study exotic quantum phases, including the highly-sought-after topological superfluid phases.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1511.08170,
title = {Realization of Two-Dimensional Spin-orbit Coupling for Bose-Einstein Condensates},
author = {Zhan Wu and Long Zhang and Wei Sun and Xiao-Tian Xu and Bao-Zong Wang and Si-Cong Ji and Youjin Deng and Shuai Chen and Xiong-Jun Liu and Jian-Wei Pan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.08170},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
27 pages, 5 figures