Emergence of unstable avoided crossing in the collective excitations of spin-1 spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We present analytical and numerical results on the collective excitation spectrum of quasi-one-dimensional spin-orbit (SO)-coupled spin-1 spinor ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensates. The collective excitation spectrum, using Bogoliubov–de Gennes theory, reveals the existence of a diverse range of phases in the SO-coupling and Rabi coupling (kL−Ω) planes. Based on the nature of the eigenvalue of the excitation spectrum, we categorize the kL−Ω plane into three distinct regions, namely, I, II (IIa and IIb), and III. In region I, a stable mode with phononlike excitations is observed. In region IIa, single- and multiple-band instabilities are noted with a gapped mode, while multiband instability accompanied by a mode corresponding to no gap between low-lying and first-excited states is realized in region IIb, which also provides evidence of unstable avoided crossing between low-lying and first-excited modes, responsible for the I o type of oscillatory nonequilibrium dynamical pattern formation. The gap between low-lying and first-excited states increases upon increasing the Rabi coupling and decreases upon increasing the SO coupling. Using eigenvector analysis, we confirm the presence of the spin-dipole mode in the spinlike modes in region II. We corroborate the nature of the collective excitation through real-time dynamical evolution of the ground state perturbed with the quench of the trap using the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii model. This analysis suggests the presence of dynamical instability leading to the disappearance of the zeroth component of the condensate. In region III, mainly encompassing Ω∼0 and finite kL, we observe phononlike excitations in both the first-excited and the low-lying state. The eigenvectors in this region reveal alternative in- and out-of-phase behaviors of the spin components. Numerical analysis reveals the presence of a superstripe phase for small Rabi coupling in this region, wherein the eigenvector indicates the presence of more complicated spinlike-density mixed modes.