Interaction induced topological Bogoliubov excitations in a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates how particle interactions and spin-orbit coupling in a 2D Bose-Einstein condensate induce topologically non-trivial excitations, revealing new edge states despite trivial single-particle topology.

Contribution

It demonstrates that interactions and symmetry breaking in a spin-orbit coupled BEC create topologically non-trivial Bogoliubov excitations with observable edge states.

Findings

Interaction induces a gap at Dirac points in the Bogoliubov spectrum.

Symmetry breaking leads to non-zero Chern numbers for excitation bands.

Edge states appear at interfaces between regions with different topological invariants.

Abstract

We study topologically non-trivial excitations of a weakly interacting, spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate in a two-dimensional square optical lattice, a system recently realized in experiment [W. Sun et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 150401 (2018)]. We focus on situations where the system is not subjected to a Zeeman field and thus does not exhibit nontrivial single-particle band topology. Of special interest then is the role of particle interaction as well as its interplay with the symmetry properties of the system in producing topologically non-trivial excitations. We find that the non-interacting system possesses a rich set of symmetries, including the $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, the modified dihedral point group symmetry $\tilde D_4$ and the nonsymmorphic symmetry. These combined symmetries ensure the existence of pairs of degenerate Dirac points at the edge of Brillouin zone for the single-particle energy bands. In the presence of particle interaction and with sufficient spin-orbit coupling, the atoms condense in a ground state with net magnetization which spontaneously breaks the $\mathcal{PT}$ and $\tilde D_4$ symmetry. We demonstrate that this symmetry breaking leads to a gap opening at the Dirac point for the Bogoliubov spectrum and consequentially topologically non-trivial excitations. We confirm the non-trivial topology by calculating the Chern numbers of the lowest excitation bands and show that gapless edge states form at the interface of systems characterized by different values of the Chern number.