Regular Article

Interaction induced localization of a spin–orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential

Key Laboratory of Atomic and Molecular Physics & Functional Materials of Gansu Province, College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, P.R. China

^a e-mail: wwychina@126.com

Received: 2 June 2018
Received in final form: 3 November 2018
Published online: 22 January 2019

Abstract

We investigate atomic interaction induced localization of a spin–orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate loaded in a double-well potential. We confirm the existence of the localization in the presence of the spin–orbit coupling for differences between the spin-dependent nonlinear atomic interaction strength between intraspin and interspin. We find a quantum phase transition from spin balance to spin localization for the different strengths of nonlinear atomic interaction strength. We also obtain the parametric dependence of the transitions to spin localization. The results play a constructive role to control spin localization of spin–orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential.