title: Fate of a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of spin-orbit coupling.
abstract: Intensive theoretical studies have recently predicted that a Bose-Einstein condensate will exhibit a variety of novel properties if spin-orbit coupling is present. However, an unambiguous fact has also been pointed out: Rashba coupling destroys a condensate of noninteracting bosons even in high dimensions. Therefore, a conceptually important question arises as to whether or not a condensate exists in the presence of interaction and a general type of spin-orbit coupling. Here we show that interaction qualitatively changes the ground state of bosons under Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Any infinitesimal repulsion forces bosons either to condense at one or two momentum states or to form a superfragmented state that is a superposition of infinite numbers of fragmented condensates. The superfragmented state is unstable against the anisotropy of spin-orbit coupling in systems with large numbers of particles, leading to the revival of a condensate in current experiments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoling
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Cui