2015/09/14 by Shang-Shun Zhang, Wu-Ming Liu, Han Pu
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Coupling (piping) #Electron #Fermi gas #Ferromagnetism #Magnetic field #Materials science #Mean field theory #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Spin (aerodynamics) #Spin–orbit interaction #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.quant-gas
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.93.043602
published as Phys. Rev. A 93, 043602 (2016) · Main text: 5 pages, 6 figures; Supplement: 4 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2015/09/14 · openalex publication_date 2016/04/04 · arxiv updated 2016/04/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We consider a repulsive two-component Fermi gas confined in a two-dimensional isotropic harmonic potential and subject to a large Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The single-particle dispersion can be tailored by the spin-orbit-coupling term, which provides an opportunity to study itinerant ferromagnetism in this system. We show that the interplay among spin-orbit coupling, correlation effect, and mean-field repulsion leads to a competition between ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic phases. The weakly correlated nonmagnetic and the ferromagnetic phases can be well described by the mean-field Hartree-Fock theory, while the transition between the ferromagnetic and a strongly correlated nonmagnetic phase is driven by beyond-mean-field quantum correlation effect. Furthermore, the ferromagnetic phase of this system possesses a chiral current density induced by the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, whose experimental signature is investigated.