Omnidirectional spin Hall effect in a Weyl spin-orbit coupled atomic gas

Abstract

We show that in the presence of a three-dimensional (Weyl) spin-orbit coupling, a transverse spin current is generated in response to either a constant spin-independent force or a time-dependent Zeeman field in an arbitrary direction. This effect is the non-Abelian counterpart of the universal intrinsic spin Hall effect characteristic to the two-dimensional Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We quantify the strength of such an omnidirectional spin Hall effect by calculating the corresponding conductivity for fermions and non-condensed bosons. The absence of any kind of disorder in ultracold-atom systems makes the observation of this effect viable.