Exotic ground states of a spin–orbit-coupled spinor Bose–Einstein condensate trapped by a toroidal potential

Abstract

The ground-state properties of a spin–orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in a toroidal trap are investigated. The exotic ground states, such as the necklace state, the persistent flow and even the vortex state, for the three components in the system are induced by adjustable external parameters. It is found that the petal number of the necklace states is increased with increasing the intensity of the spin–orbit coupling (SOC), and the anisotropy of the SOC can be used to control the structure of the ground states. The rotation of the condensate induced by the external field makes the densities of the three components asymmetric and tends to transform the necklace state to the persistent flow. The radius of the toroidal potential is another degree of freedom for manipulating the necklace state. In addition, the transition between the necklace state and the vortex, intermediated by the persistent flow, can be controlled by the ratio of the density-density and spin-exchange interactions. All of above results enrich our knowledge about the properties of the ground states of spin-1 BEC trapped in the toroidal trap.