The fragmentation of spin-orbit coupled spin-1 Bose gas with a weak interaction in external harmonic trap is explored by both exact diagonalization and mean-field theory. This fragmentation tendency, which originates from the total angular momentum c
onservation, is affected obviously by the spin-orbit coupling strength and the spin-dependent interaction. Strong spin-orbit interaction raises the inverse participation ratio, which describes the number of significantly occupied single-particle states. As the spin-dependent interaction changes from anti-ferromagnetic to ferromagnetic, the peak values in the inverse participation ratio become lower. Without the confinement of the appointed total angular momentum, the condensate chooses a zero or finite total angular momentum ground state, which is determined by both the interaction and the spin-orbit coupling strength.
We theoretically investigate the control of a magnetic Feshbach resonance using a bound-to-bound molecular transition driven by spatially modulated laser light. Due to the spatially periodic coupling between the ground and excited molecular states, t
here exists a band structure of bound states, which can uniquely be characterized by some extra bumps in radio-frequency spectroscopy. With the increasing of coupling strength, the series of bound states will cross zero energy and directly result in a number of scattering resonances, whose position and width can be conveniently tuned by the coupling strength of the laser light and the applied magnetic field (i.e., the detuning of the ground molecular state). In the presence of the modulated laser light, universal two-body bound states near zero-energy threshold still exist. However, compared with the case without modulation, the regime for such universal states is usually small. An unified formula which embodies the influence of the modulated coupling on the resonance width is given. The spatially modulated coupling also implies a local spatially varying interaction between atoms. Our work proposes a practical way of optically controlling interatomic interactions with high spatial resolution and negligible atomic loss.
We investigate the confinement induced resonance in spin-orbit coupled cold atoms with Raman coupling. We find that the quasi-bound levels induced by the spin-orbit coupling and Raman coupling result in the Feshbach-type resonances. For sufficiently
large Raman coupling, the bound states in one dimension exist only for sufficiently strong attractive interaction. Furthermore, the bound states in quasi-one dimension exist only for sufficient large ratio of the length scale of confinement to three dimensional s-wave scattering length. The Raman coupling substantially changes the confinement-induced resonance position. We give a proposal to realize confinement induced resonance by increasing the Raman coupling strength in experiments.
The Zitterbewegung effect in spin-orbit coupled spin-1 cold atoms is investigated in the presence of the Zeeman field and a harmonic trap. It is shown that the Zeeman field and the harmonic trap have significant effect on the Zitterbewegung oscillato
ry behaviors. The external Zeeman field could suppress or enhance the Zitterbewegung amplitude and change the frequencies of oscillation. A much slowly damping Zitterbewegung oscillation can be achieved by adjusting both the linear and quadratic Zeeman field. Multi-frequency Zitterbewegung oscillation can be induced by the applied Zeeman field. In the presence of the harmonic trap, the subpackets corresponding to different eigenenergies would always keep coherent, resulting in the persistent Zitterbewegung oscillations. The Zitterbewegung oscillation would display very complicated and irregular oscillation characteristics due to the coexistence of different frequencies of the Zitterbewegung oscillation. Numerical results show that, the Zitterbewegung effect is robust even in the presence of interaction between atoms.
We analytically and numerically investigate the ground state of the spin-orbit coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates in an external parabolic potential. When the spin-orbit coupling strength $kappa$ is comparable with that of the trapping potentia
l, the density distribution centers of different components of the spinor condensate deviate evidently from the trap center in the plane wave and stripe phases. When $kappagg1$, the magnitude of this deviation decreases as $kappa$ is getting larger and larger. Correspondingly, periphery half-skyrmions textures arise. This deviation can be reflected by the non-uniform magnetic moment in the $z$ direction, $mathcal{F}_z$. With the manipulation of the external trap, the local magnitude of $mathcal{F}_z$ can be increased evidently. This kind of increase of $mathcal{F}_z$ is also observed in the square vortex lattice phase of the condensate.
