Two-dimensional solitons in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates with spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We report families of two-dimensional (2D) composite solitons in spinor dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, with two localized components linearly mixed by the spin-orbit coupling (SOC), and the intrinsic nonlinearity represented by the dipole-dipole interaction (DDI) between atomic magnetic moments polarized in plane by an external magnetic field. Recently, stable solitons were predicted in the form of semivortices (composites built of coupled fundamental and vortical components) in the 2D system combining the SOC and contact attractive interactions. Replacing the latter by the anisotropic long-range DDI, we demonstrate that, for a fixed norm of the soliton, the system supports a continuous family of stable spatially asymmetric vortex solitons (AVSs), parameterized by an offset of the pivot of the vortical component relative to its fundamental counterpart. The offset is limited by a certain maximum value, while the energy of the AVS practically does not depend on the offset. At small values of the norm, the vortex solitons are subject to a weak oscillatory instability. In the present system, with the Galilean invariance broken by the SOC, the composite solitons are set in motion by a kick the strength of which exceeds a certain depinning value. The kicked solitons feature a negative effective mass, drifting along a spiral trajectory opposite to the direction of the kick. A critical angular velocity, up to which the semivortices may follow rotation of the polarizing magnetic field, is found too.