Impact of scalar potentials on cold atoms with spin-orbit coupling.

When a gauge potential is constructed from the Berry phase, there is an associated scalar potential coming with the gauge potential. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this scalar potential on cold atoms by constructing an artificial gauge potential in a cold-atomic system. We interpret the scalar potential as the coupling between the atom and the mass of the non-Abelian part of the gauge potential. We demonstrate that the gauge potential can produce spin-orbit coupling and that the scalar potential will suppress the spin Hall currents which are generated by spin-orbit coupling. We also discuss the observation of these phenomena in a real experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]