Cavity-induced spin-orbit coupling in an interacting bosonic wire

Abstract

We consider theoretically ultra-cold interacting bosonic atoms confined to a wire geometry and coupled to the field of an optical cavity. A spin-orbit coupling is induced via Raman transitions employing a cavity mode and a transverse running wave pump beam, the transition imprints a spatial dependent phase onto the atomic wavefunction. Adiabatic elimination of the cavity field leads to an effective Hamiltonian for the atomic degrees of freedom, with a self-consistency condition. We map the spin-orbit coupled bosonic wire to a bosonic ladder in a magnetic field, by discretizing the spatial dimension. Using the numerical density matrix renormalization group method, we show that in the continuum limit the dynamical stabilization of a Meissner superfluid is possible, for parameters achievable by nowadays experiments.