Experiments with Bose-Einstein Condensates in a Spin-Orbit Coupled Optical Lattice

Ultracold quantum gases dressed by laser light are a powerful tool to investigate the dynamics of quantum mechanical Hamiltonians. When a Bose-Einstein condensate is placed in appropriately tailored laser fields, spin-orbit coupling as well as periodic band structures can be generated. We have developed an effective band structure picture to describe such Bose-Einstein condensates in a spin-orbit coupled lattice. Our model predicts the location of the resulting band edges. By performing atom loss measurements, we experimentally probe the predicted band structures and find excellent agreement between our experiment and our theoretical predictions.