Ultracold collision in the presence of synthetic spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We present an analytic description of ultracold collision between two spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ fermions with isotropic spin-orbit coupling of the Rashba type. We show that regardless of how weak the spin-orbit coupling may be, the ultracold collision at sufficiently low energies is significantly modified, including the ubiquitous Wigner threshold behavior. We further show that the particles are preferably scattered into the lower-energy helicity state due to the break of parity conservation, thus establishing interaction with spin-orbit coupling as one mechanism for the spontaneous emergence of handedness.