Bose–Einstein condensates under a non-Hermitian spin–orbit coupling*

Abstract

We study the properties of Bose-Einstein condensates under a non-Hermitian spin-orbit coupling(SOC), induced by a dissipative two-photon Raman process. We focus on the dynamics of the condensate at short times, when the impact of decoherence induced by quantum jumps is negligible and the dynamics is coherently driven by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Given the significantly modified single-particle physics by dissipative SOC, the interplay of non-Hermiticity and interaction leads to a quasi-steady-state phase diagram different from its Hermitian counterpart. In particular, we find that dissipation can induce a phase transition from the stripe phase to the plane-wave phase. We further map out the phase diagram with respect to the dissipation and interaction strengths, and finally investigate the stability of quasi-steady states through the time-dependent, dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Our results are readily accessible based on standard experiments with synthetic spin-orbit couplings.