Supersolid phases and collective excitations in two-dimensional Rashba spin-orbit coupled spin-1 condensates

Abstract

We investigate the collective excitation spectrum and dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate with Rashba type spin-orbit (SO) coupling. Employing Bogoliubov-de-Gennes analysis, we analytically compute the excitation spectra across a wide range of interaction strengths and coupling parameters. By systematically varying the SO and Rabi couplings, we uncover distinct dynamical signatures of quantum phase transitions, including mode softening, the appearance of roton-like minima, and miscibility-driven instabilities in both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interaction regimes. In the antiferromagnetic case, these instabilities lead to a dynamically unstable supersolid phase characterized by the coexistence of density modulation and global phase coherence. To corroborate the analytical predictions, we numerically solve the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations and analyze the dynamical stability of the condensate. Our results provide experimentally accessible signatures for spinor condensates with tunable spin-orbit coupling and demonstrate the rich interplay between spin-dependent interactions and synthetic couplings in nonequilibrium quantum fluids.