Frustrated Bose-Einstein condensates with non-collinear orbital ordering

Abstract

We investigate the unconventional Bose-Einstein condensations (BEC) with the orbital degree of freedom in the 3D cubic optical lattice, which give rise to various exotic features absent in conventional scalar and spinor BECs. Orbital angular momentum moments are formed on lattice sites breaking time-reversal symmetry spontaneously. Furthermore, they exhibit orbital frustrations and develop a chiral ordering selected by the "order-from-disorder" mechanism.