Spin-Nematic Vortex States in Cold Atoms
Spin-Nematic Vortex States in Cold Atoms
复制标题
冷原子中的自旋向列涡旋态
DOI：
10.1103/physrevlett.125.195303
复制
发表时间：
2020
影响因子：
8.6
通讯作者：
Pu Han
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Chen Li;Zhang Yunbo;Pu Han
（伪）自旋自由度极大地丰富了冷原子的物理学。对于具有高自旋（即自旋量子数大于）的系统尤其如此。例如，在高自旋系统中，不仅可以构造 1 阶自旋向量，还可以构造 2 阶自旋张量。在这里，我们提出了一个简单的方案，在自旋 1 冷原子系统中耦合自旋张量和质心轨道角动量，并表明这会导致物质的新量子相：自旋向列涡旋态，其特征是 SU(2) 自旋向列张量子空间中的涡量。在适当的条件下，这种状态的特征是量子化的拓扑数。我们的工作开辟了高自旋拓扑量子物质研究的新途径。
The (pseudo)spin degrees of freedom greatly enriches the physics of cold atoms. This is particularly so for systems with high spins (i.e., spin quantum number larger than). For example, one can construct not only the rank-1 spin vector, but also the rank-2 spin tensor in high spin systems. Here we propose a simple scheme to couple the spin tensor and the center-of-mass orbital angular momentum in a spin-1 cold atom system and show that this leads to a new quantum phase of the matter: the spin-nematic vortex state that features vorticity in an SU(2) spin-nematic tensor subspace. Under proper conditions, such states are characterized by quantized topological numbers. Our work opens up new avenues of research in topological quantum matter with high spins.