Spin Hall Effect in a Spinor Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates the emergence of the spin Hall effect in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate caused by magnetic dipole-dipole interactions acting as a spin-orbit coupling, with potential experimental implications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for the spin Hall effect in BECs via magnetic dipole-dipole interactions serving as spin-orbit coupling, with detailed calculations of spin Hall conductivity.

Findings

Spin Hall effect arises in dipolar BEC due to MDDI-induced spin-orbit coupling.

The MDDI significantly enhances the spin Hall conductivity.

Possible experimental setups for observing the effect are discussed.

Abstract

We theoretically show that the spin Hall effect arises in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of neutral atoms interacting via the magnetic dipole-dipole interactions (MDDIs). Since the MDDI couples the total spin angular momentum and the relative orbital angular momentum of two colliding atoms, it works as a spin-orbit coupling. Thus, when we prepare a BEC in a magnetic sublevel $m=0$, thermally and quantum-mechanically excited atoms in the $m=1$ and $-1$ states feel the Lorentz-like foces in the opposite directions. This is the origin for the emergence of the the spin Hall effect. We define the mass-current and spin-current operators from the equations of continuity and calculate the spin Hall conductivity from the off-diagonal current-current correlation function within the Bogoliubov approximation. We find that the correction of the current operators due to the MDDI significantly contributes to the spin Hall conductivity. Possible experimental situation is also discussed.