An experimental proposal for realizing spin-orbit (SO) coupling of pseudospin 1 in the ground manifold ${}^1\mathrm{\Sigma }(\upsilon =0)$ of (bosonic) bialkali polar molecules is presented. The three spin components are composed of the ground rotational state and two substates from the first excited rotational level. Using hyperfine resolved Raman processes through two select excited states resonantly coupled by a microwave, an effective coupling between the spin tensor and linear momentum is realized. The properties of Bose-Einstein condensates for such SO-coupled molecules exhibiting dipolar interactions are further explored. In addition to the SO-coupling-induced stripe structures, the singly and doubly quantized vortex phases are found to appear, implicating exciting opportunities for exploring novel quantum physics using SO-coupled rotating polar molecules with dipolar interactions.

• Received 10 January 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.97.053609