We demonstrate that dynamical symmetry plays a crucial role in determining the structure of the eigenspectra of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). In particular, the eigenspectra of spin-1 and spin-2 BECs in the single-mode approximation are shown to be completely determined by dynamical symmetries, where a spin-2 BEC corresponds to the U(5) limit of the interacting boson model in nuclear physics. The eigenspectrum of a spin-3 BEC is solved analytically for a specific class of coupling constants, while it is shown that dynamical symmetry alone is not sufficient to determine the spectrum for arbitrary coupling constants. We also study the low-lying eigenspectra of spin-1 and spin-2 BECs in the absence of external magnetic field, and find, in particular, that the quasidegenerate spectra emerge for antiferromagnetic and cyclic phases. This implies that these systems are highly susceptible to external perturbations and may undergo symmetry-breaking transitions to other states upon increasing the system's size.
We demonstrate that dynamical symmetry plays a crucial role in determining the structure of the eigenspectra of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). In particular, the eigenspectra of spin-1 and spin-2 BECs in the single-mode approximation are shown to be completely determined by dynamical symmetries, where a spin-2 BEC corresponds to the U(5) limit of the interacting boson model in nuclear physics. The eigenspectrum of a spin-3 BEC is solved analytically for a specific class of coupling constants, while it is shown that dynamical symmetry alone is not sufficient to determine the spectrum for arbitrary coupling constants. We also study the low-lying eigenspectra of spin-1 and spin-2 BECs in the absence of external magnetic field, and find, in particular, that the quasidegenerate spectra emerge for antiferromagnetic and cyclic phases. This implies that these systems are highly susceptible to external perturbations and may undergo symmetry-breaking transitions to other states upon increasing the system's size.
The ground states of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of spin-2 bosons are classified into three distinct phases (ferromagnetic, ``antiferromagnetic,'' and cyclic) depending on the s-wave scattering lengths of binary collisions for total-spin 0, 2, and 4 channels. Many-body spin correlations and magnetic response of the condensate in each of these phases are studied in a mesoscopic regime, while low-lying excitation spectra are investigated in the thermodynamic regime. In the mesoscopic regime, where the system is so tightly confined that the spatial degrees of freedom are frozen, the exact, many-body ground state for each phase is found to be expressed in terms of the creation operators of pair or trio bosons having spin correlations. These pairwise and trio-wise units are shown to bring about some unique features of spin-2 BECs such as a huge jump in magnetization from minimum to maximum possible values and the robustness of the minimum-magnetization state against an applied magnetic field. In the thermodynamic regime, where the system is spatially uniform, low-lying excitation spectra in the presence of magnetic field are obtained analytically using the Bogoliubov approximation. In the ferromagnetic phase, the excitation spectrum consists of one Goldstone mode and four single-particle modes. In the antiferromagnetic phase, where spin-singlet ``pairs'' undergo Bose-Einstein condensation, the spectrum consists of two Goldstone modes and three massive ones, all of which become massless when magnetic field vanishes. In the cyclic phase, where boson ``trios'' condense into a spin-singlet state, the spectrum is characterized by two Goldstone modes, one single-particle mode having a magnetic-field-independent energy gap, and a gapless single-particle mode that becomes massless in the absence of magnetic field.
We present an analytical model for the theoretical analysis of spin dynamics and spontaneous symmetry breaking in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This allows for an excellent intuitive understanding of the processes and provides good quantitative agreement with the experimental results of Scherer et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 135302 (2010)]. It is shown that the dynamics of a spinor BEC initially prepared in an unstable Zeeman state mF=0 ($\left|0\right\ensuremath{\rangle}$) can be understood by approximating the effective trapping potential for the state $\left|\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1\right\ensuremath{\rangle}$ with a cylindrical box potential. The resonances in the creation efficiency of these atom pairs can be traced back to excitation modes of this confinement. The understanding of these excitation modes allows for a detailed characterization of the symmetry-breaking mechanism, showing how a twofold spontaneous breaking of spatial and spin symmetry can occur. In addition, a detailed account of the experimental methods for the preparation and analysis of spinor quantum gases is given.
Due to the coexistence of phase coherence and magnetic order, Bose-Einstein condensates with internal degrees of freedom, i.e., spinor BECs, are considered to serve as an ideal table-top playground for the studies of various phenomena in different fields of physics.They have been widely used in studying spin textures and topological defects, coherent spin dynamics, quantum symmetry breaking, quantum phase transitions, etc.However, the theoretical framework used in these works is based on the mean-field theory in which the effects of quantum fluctuations are ignored.Despite the success of the mean-field theory in the description of spinor BECs, there are particular features whose account must rely on a beyond-mean-field theory as the effects of quantum fluctuations become significant.In this thesis, we develop the Beliaev theory, which is a Green's function approach beyond the Bogoliubov theory, for spinor BECs to study the effects of quantum fluctuations on the condensates' phase structures, elementary excitations, stabilities, and phase transitions.First, we point out that the Bogoliubov theory fails to capture the metastable states associated with first-order quantum phase transitions in spin-2 BECs.In fact, we show that these metastable states are induced by quantum fluctuations, and only by going to the next-order approximation, i.e., the Beliaev theory, can we show that they indeed appear around the phase boundaries.Besides the fluctuation-induced metastability, we find another important class of first-order quantum phase transitions in both spin-1 and spin-2 BECs.In this class, there is no metastable state to all orders of approximation since it is prohibited by a high symmetry of the Hamiltonian at the phase boundary, resulting in a characteristic flat energy landscape.Despite being first-order phase transitions, the flat energy landscape leads to the criticality in the dynamics of the condensate through these transitions in a manner similar to second-order phase transitions.Second, we succeed in deriving the analytic expression for the energy gap of the so-called quasi-Nambu-Goldstone (quasi-NG) modes, which are excitations not generated by spontaneous symmetry breaking, in the nematic phase of spin-2 BECs.Although quasi-NG modes are gapless at the mean-field level, we prove that with quantum corrections they acquire a nonzero energy gap.From the obtained magnitude of the energy gap, we can evaluate the critical temperature above which a topological defect such as a vortex of spin nematicity would decay by emitting thermally excited quasi-NG modes.We also study how the propagation of quasi-NG modes in space is affected by the particle-number density fluctuations of the condensate.Third, we calculate the damping rates of various types of quasiparticles in a spin-2 BEC including phonons, magnons, and quasi-NG modes.They actually have finite lifetime and decay via numerous channels of collision with the condensate atoms.Using either the Fermi's golden rule or the spinor Beliaev theory, we obtain the analytic expressions for the damping rates of phonons and magnons, from which the power-law dependence of the damping rates on the momentum is deduced.In contrast, the damping of quasi-NG modes is suppressed due to the energy conservation.
We develop a symmetry classification scheme to find ground states of pseudo-spin-21, spin-1, and spin-2 spin-orbit-coupled spinor Bose-Einstein condensates and show that as the SO(2) symmetry of simultaneous spin and space rotations is broken into discrete cyclic groups, various types of lattice structures emerge in the absence of a lattice potential. Examples include two different kagome lattices for pseudo-spin-21 condensates and a nematic vortex lattice in which uniaxial and biaxial spin textures align alternatively for spin-2 condensates. For the pseudo-spin-21 system, although mean-field states always break time-reversal symmetry, there exists a time-reversal invariant many-body ground state, which is fragmented and expected to be observed in a microcondensate.
We investigate dynamics of Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) in a single-well potential using the mode-coupling method. Symmetry is shown to play a key role in the coupling between modes. A proper mode-coupling theory of the dynamics of BECs in a single-well potential should include at least four modes. In this context, the ideal BEC system can be decomposed into two independent subsystems when the coupling is caused by external potential perturbation and is linear. The mode dynamics of non-ideal BECs with interaction shows rich behavior. The combination of nonlinear coupling and initial condition leads to the different regimes of mode dynamics, from regularity to non-regularity, which also indicates a change of the dependence of coupling on the symmetry of modes.
We consider the statics and dynamics of F = 1 spinor Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) confined in double-well potentials. We use a two-mode Galerkin-type quasi-analytical approximation to describe the stationary states of the system. This way, we are able to obtain not only earlier results based on the single-mode approximation (SMA) frequently used in studies of spinor BECs, but also additional modes that involve either two or all three spinor components of the F = 1 spinor BEC. The results based on this Galerkin-type decomposition are in good agreement with the analysis of the full system. We subsequently analyze the stability of these multi-component states, as well as their dynamics when we find them to be unstable. The instabilities of the symmetric or anti-symmetric states exhibit symmetry-breaking and recurrent asymmetric patterns. Our results yield qualitatively similar bifurcation diagrams both for polar (such as 23 Na) and ferromagnetic (such as 87 Rb) spinor BECs.