Intrinsic anomalous Hall effect across the magnetic phase transition of a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We study theoretically the zero temperature intrinsic anomalous Hall effect in an experimentally realized 2D spin-orbit coupled Bose gas. For anisotropic atomic interactions and as the spin-orbit coupling strength increases, the system undergoes a ground state phase transition from states exhibiting a total in-plane magnetization to those with a perpendicular magnetization along the $z$ direction. We show that finite frequency, or ac, Hall responses exist in both phases in the absence of an artificial magnetic field, as a result of finite inter-band transitions. However, the characteristics of the anomalous Hall responses are drastically different in these two phases because of the different symmetries preserved by the corresponding ground states. In particular, we find a finite dc Hall conductivity in one phase but not the other. The underlying physical reasons for this are analyzed further by exploring relations of the dc Hall conductivity to the system's chirality and Berry curvatures of the Bloch bands. Finally, we discuss an experimental method of probing the anomalous Hall effect in trapped systems.