Spin-orbit coupled bosons interacting in a two-dimensional harmonic trap

Abstract

A system of bosons in a two-dimensional harmonic trap in the presence of Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling is investigated. An analytic treatment of the ground state of a single atom in the weak-coupling regime is presented and used as a basis for a perturbation theory in the interacting two-boson system. The numerical diagonalization of both the single-particle and the two-boson Hamiltonian matrices allows us to go beyond those approximations and obtain not only the ground state, but also the low-energy spectra and the different energy contributions separately. We show that the expectation value of the spin-orbit term is related to the expectation value of $\hat{\sigma}_z \hat{L}_z$ for the eigenstates of the system, regardless of the trapping potential. The low-energy states of the repulsively interacting two-boson system are characterized. With the presence of a sufficiently strong interaction and spin-orbit coupling strength, there is a direct energy-level crossing in the ground state of the system between states of different $J_z$, the third component of the total angular momentum, that changes its structure. This is reflected in a discontinuity in the different energy terms and it is signaled in the spatial density of the system.