Quantum-fluctuation-induced superfluid density in two-dimensional spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We study a two-dimensional spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ interacting Bose-Einstein condensate with a Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. The analytical expression of the superfluid density is derived from the linear response theory and Bogoliubov approximation. We find that the superfluid density can be divided into three terms, which originate from the condensate, the interaction between the condensate and the Bogoliubov excitations, and only the excitations. We show that the condensate-excitation interaction changes the bare mass in the superfluid density into the effective mass. In the isotropic spin-orbit coupling limit, the effective mass diverges, and the superfluid density is predicted to be zero within previous studies; however, our work shows that the excitation-induced superfluid density remains nonzero, which means that quantum fluctuations rescue the superfluidity. Our results show the importance of the quantum fluctuations in understanding the superfluid properties of spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates.