Dissipationless Vector Drag--Superfluid Spin Hall Effect

Abstract

Dissipationless flows in single-component superfluids have a significant degree of universality. In He4, the dissipationless mass flow occurs with a superfluid velocity determined by the gradient of the superfluid phase. However, in interacting superfluid mixtures, principally new effects appear. In this Letter, we demonstrate a new kind of dissipationless phenomenon arising in mixtures of interacting bosons in optical lattices. We point out that for a particular class of optical lattices, bosons condense in a state where one of the components' superflow results in dissipationless mass flow of the other component, in a direction different from either of the components' superfluid velocities. The free-energy density of these systems contains a vector product-like interaction of superfluid velocities, producing the dissipationless noncollinear entrainment. The effect represents a superfluid counterpart of the Spin Hall effect.