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It was recently found that the electric local-field effect (LFE) can lead to a strong coupling of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) to off-resonant optical fields. We demonstrate that the magnetic LFE gives rise to a previously unexplored mechanism for coupling a (pseudo-) spinor BEC or fermion gas to microwaves (MWs). We present a theory for the magnetic LFE and find that it gives rise to a short-range attractive interaction between two components of the (pseudo) spinor, and a long-range interaction between them. The latter interaction, resulting from deformation of the magnetic field, is locally repulsive but globally attractive, in sharp contrast with its counterpart for the optical LFE, produced by phase modulation of the electric field. Our analytical results, confirmed by the numerical computations, show that the long-range interaction gives rise to modulational instability of the spatially uniform state, and it creates stable ground states in the form of hybrid matter-wave-microwave solitons (which seem like one-dimensional magnetic monopoles), with a size much smaller than the MW wavelength, even in the presence of arbitrarily strong contact intercomponent repulsion. The setting is somewhat similar to exciton-polaritonic condensates in semiconductor microcavities. The release of matter waves from the soliton may be used for the realization of an atom laser. The analysis also applies to molecular BECs with rotational states coupled by the electric MW field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theoretically investigate quantum tunnelling escape of a spin–orbit (SO)-coupled Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) from a trapping well. The condensate is initially prepared in a quasi-one-dimensional harmonic trap. Depending on the system parameters, the ground state can fall in different phases—single minimum, separated or stripe. Then, suddenly the trapping well is opened at one side. The subsequent dynamics of the condensate is studied by solving nonlinear Schrödinger equations. We found that the diverse phases will greatly change the tunneling escape behavior of SO-coupled BECs. In the single minimum and separated phases, the condensate escapes the trapping well continuously, while in the stripe phase it escapes the well as an array of pulses. We also found that SO coupling has a suppressing effect on the tunnelling escape of atoms. Especially, for BECs without inter-atom interaction, the tunnelling escape can be almost completely eliminated when the system is tuned near the transition point between the single minimum and stripe phases. Our work thus suggests that SO coupling may be a useful tool to control the tunnelling dynamics of BECs, and potentially be applied in the realization of atom lasers and matter wave switches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]