Enhanced transport of spin-orbit coupled Bose gases in disordered potentials

Published

September 17, 2020

Author(s)

Yuchen Yue, Ian Spielman, Carlos S? de Melo

Abstract

Anderson localization is single particle localization phenomena in disordered media that is accompanied by an absence of diffusion. Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) describes an interaction between a particle's spin and its momentum that directly affects its energy dispersion, for example creating dispersion relations with gaps and multiple local minima. We show theoretically that combining one-dimensional spin-orbit coupling with a transverse Zeeman field suppresses the effects of disorder, thereby increasing the localization length and conductivity. This increase results from a suppression of back scattering between states in the gap of the SOC dispersion relation. Here, we focus specifically on the interplay of disorder from an optical speckle potential and SOC generated by two-photon Raman processes in quasi-1D Bose-Einstein condensates. We qualitatively the enhanced transport using a Fermi's golden rule approach, and then numerically confirm this picture by solving the time-dependent 1D Gross Pitaevskii equation for a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate with SOC and disorder. We find that on the 10's of millisecond time scale of typical cold atom experiments moving in harmonic traps, that momentum states that align with the SOC gap evolve with negligible back- scattering, while without SOC is absent, these same states rapidly localize.

Citation

Physical Review A

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Anderson localization, Quantum gases, transport

Citation

Yue, Y. , Spielman, I. and S? de Melo, C. (2020), Enhanced transport of spin-orbit coupled Bose gases in disordered potentials, Physical Review A, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=929623 (Accessed January 2, 2025)