2018/03/31 by H. -R. Chen, K. -Y. Lin, P. -K. Chen +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.113204
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 113204 (2018)
arxiv created 2018/08/06 · arxiv updated 2018/09/19
We demonstrate coupling between the atomic spin and orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) of the atom's center-of-mass motion in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The coupling is induced by Raman-dressing lasers with a Laguerre-Gaussian beam, and creates coreless vortices in a F=1 87Rb spinor BEC. We observe correlations between spin and OAM in the dressed state and characterize the spin texture; the result is in good agreement with the theory. In the presence of the Raman field our dressed state is stable for 0.1~s or longer, and it decays due to collision-induced relaxation. As we turn off the Raman beams, the vortex cores in the bare spin |mF=1⟩ and |-1⟩ split. These spin-OAM coupled systems with the Raman-dressing approach have great potential for exploring new topological textures and quantum states.