# Bloch oscillations of spin-orbit-coupled cold atoms in an optical lattice and spin current generation

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamics of spin-orbit-coupled cold atoms in an optical lattice, revealing how inter- and intraladder couplings influence Bloch oscillations and exploring the potential for spin current generation.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of Bloch oscillations in spin-orbit-coupled cold atoms, highlighting the effects of inter- and intraladder couplings and the breaking of Galilean invariance.

## Key findings

- Intraladder coupling causes standard Bloch oscillations.
- Interladder coupling results in high-frequency oscillations.
- Spin-orbit interaction leads to out-of-phase spin component oscillations.

## Abstract

We study the Bloch oscillation dynamics of a spin-orbit-coupled cold atomic gas trapped inside a one-dimensioanl optical lattice. The eigenspectra of the system is identified as two interpenetrating Wannier-Stark ladder. Based on that, we carefully analyzed the Bloch oscillation dynamics and found out that intraladder coupling between neighboring rungs of Wannier-Stark ladder give rise to ordinary Bloch oscillation while interladder coupling lead to small amplitude high frequency oscillation superimposed on it. Specifically spin-orbit interaction breaks Galilean invariance, which can be reflected by out-of-phase oscillation of the two spin components in the accelerated frame. The possibility of generating spin current in this system are also explored.