A Geometric Description of Raman Fingerprints on Spinor BECs

We employ a geometric description of a coherent, diabatic two-photon Raman interaction as a rotation on the Bloch sphere of a spin-1/2 system. The spin state of the system is described by a point on the sphere and the time evolution is described by a trajectory of the sphere’s surface. The axis of rotation is determined by properties of the optical Raman beams: the pulse area, the relative intensities, relative phase, and relative frequencies. The two-photon detuning gives fine control over the sizes and phases of the imprinted features. This interpretation allows us not only to precisely engineer complex, spatially varying spin textures, but also to characterize these textures with a form of atomic polarimetry as we demonstrate on a coreless vortex in a spinor BEC.