Spin–orbit coupled Bose–Einstein condensates with Rydberg-dressing interaction*Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2011CB921504) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11104292).

Abstract

Interaction between Rydberg atoms can be used to control the properties of interatomic interaction in ultracold gases by weakly dressing the atoms with a Rydberg state. Here we investigate the effect of the Rydberg-dressing interaction on the ground-state properties of a Bose–Einstein condensate imposed by Raman-induced spin–orbit coupling. We find that, in the case of SU(2)-invariant s-wave interactions, the gas is only in the plane-wave phase and the zero-momentum phase is absent. In particular, we also predict an unexpected magnetic stripe phase composed of two plane-wave components with unequal weight when s-wave interactions are non-symmetric, which originates from the Rydberg-dressing interaction.