Chiral confinement in quasirelativistic Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper explores how laser-induced spin-orbit coupling in ultra-cold Bose-Einstein condensates leads to a quasi-relativistic, non-linear Dirac-like behavior, resulting in self-trapped, chiral-confined states in various dimensions.

Contribution

It demonstrates the emergence of chiral confinement in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates due to spin-orbit coupling and non-linearity, extending the concept from 1D to multi-dimensional geometries.

Findings

Self-trapped condensates exhibit sinusoidal dependence on interactions in 1D.

Multi-dimensional chiral confinement is feasible with specific laser setups.

2D and 3D condensates show distinct properties from 1D cases.

Abstract

In the presence of a laser-induced spin-orbit coupling an interacting ultra cold spinor Bose-Einstein condensate may acquire a quasi-relativistic character described by a non-linear Dirac-like equation. We show that as a result of the spin-orbit coupling and the non-linearity the condensate may become self-trapped, resembling the so-called chiral confinement, previously studied in the context of the massive Thirring model. We first consider 1D geometries where the self-confined condensates present an intriguing sinusoidal dependence on the inter-particle interactions. We further show that multi-dimensional chiral-confinement is also possible under appropriate feasible laser arrangements, and discuss the properties of 2D and 3D condensates, which differ significantly from the 1D case.