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arXiv:1607.02406 · Physical Review Letters

Competition between Bose-Einstein Condensation and Spin Dynamics

B. Naylor, Mirosław Brewczyk, Mariusz Gajda, O. Gorceix, É. Maréchal, L. Vernac, B. Laburthe-Tolra

Published Oct 27, 2016• 22 citations
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Abstract

We study the impact of spin-exchange collisions on the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensation by rapidly cooling a chromium multicomponent Bose gas. Despite relatively strong spin-dependent interactions, the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation is reached before the spin degrees of freedom fully thermalize. The increase in density due to Bose-Einstein condensation then triggers spin dynamics, hampering the formation of condensates in spin-excited states. Small metastable spinor condensates are, nevertheless, produced, and they manifest in strong spin fluctuations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.117.185302

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We study the impact of spin-exchange collisions on the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensation by rapidly cooling a chromium multicomponent Bose gas. Despite relatively strong spin-dependent interactions, the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation is reached before the spin degrees of freedom fully thermalize. The increase in density due to Bose-Einstein condensation then triggers spin dynamics, hampering the formation of condensates in spin-excited states. Small metastable spinor condensates are, nevertheless, produced, and they manifest in strong spin fluctuations.
We study the thermal activation of spin fluctuations in dynamically stable spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. We analyze the specific cases of a nondipolar spin-1 condensate in the state m=0m=0m=0, where thermal activation results from spin-changing collisions, and of a chromium condensate in the maximally stretched state $m=\ensuremath{-}3$, where thermal spin fluctuations are due to dipole-induced spin relaxation. In both cases, we show that the low energy associated to the spinor physics may be employed for thermometry purposes down to extremely low temperatures, typically impossible to measure in Bose-Einstein condensates with the usual thermometric techniques. Moreover, the peculiar dependence of the system's entropy with the applied Zeeman energy opens a possible route for adiabatic cooling.
We report on the generation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a gas of chromium atoms, which have an exceptionally large magnetic dipole moment and therefore underlie anisotropic long-range interactions. The preparation of the chromium condensate requires novel cooling strategies that are adapted to its special electronic and magnetic properties. The final step to reach quantum degeneracy is forced evaporative cooling of 52Cr atoms within a crossed optical dipole trap. At a critical temperature of T(c) approximately 700 nK, we observe Bose-Einstein condensation by the appearance of a two-component velocity distribution. We are able to produce almost pure condensates with more than 50,000 condensed 52Cr atoms.
We analyze the physics of spin-3 Bose-Einstein condensates, and, in particular, the new physics expected in ongoing experiments with condensates of chromium atoms. We first discuss the ground-state properties, which, depending on still unknown chromium parameters, and for low magnetic fields, can present various types of phases. We also discuss the spinor dynamics in chromium spinor condensates, which present significant qualitative differences when compared to other spinor condensates. In particular, dipole-induced spin relaxation may lead for low magnetic fields to transfer of spin into angular momentum similar to the well-known Einstein-de Haas effect. Additionally, a rapid large transference of population between distant magnetic states also becomes possible.
Spinor Bose-Einstein condensates under external magnetic fields exhibit well-characterized spin domains of its ground state due to spin-dependent interactions. At low temperatures, collision-induced spin-mixing instabilities may promote the condensate to dwell into metastable states occurring near the phase boundaries. In this paper, we study theoretically the metastable spin-phase diagram of a spin-1 antiferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate at zero and finite temperatures. The approach makes use of Hartree-Fock theory and exploits the symmetry of the Hamiltonian and of the order parameters yielding a closed system of transcendental equations for the free energy, fully avoiding the use of self-consistency methods. Our results are consistent with recent experiments and allow us to explain qualitatively the different types of observed quench dynamics. In addition, we found that similar phenomena should occur in antiferromagnetic spinor condensates with a sudden change in the temperature. It is shown also that the increase in temperature induces a traceable shift of the ferromagnetic-polar transition boundary, behavior previously not noted by self-consistent mean-field calculations.
We experimentally investigate and analyze the rich dynamics in F=2F=2F=2 spinor Bose-Einstein condensates of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{R}\mathrm{b}87Rb. An interplay between mean-field driven spin dynamics and hyperfine-changing losses in addition to interactions with the thermal component is observed. In particular, we measure conversion rates in the range of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}12}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}}^{3}\text{ }{\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for spin-changing collisions within the F=2F=2F=2 manifold and spin-dependent loss rates in the range of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}13}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}}^{3}\text{ }{\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for hyperfine-changing collisions. We observe polar behavior in the F=2F=2F=2 ground state of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{R}\mathrm{b}87Rb, while we find the F=1F=1F=1 ground state to be ferromagnetic. We further see a magnetization for condensates prepared with nonzero total spin.
We study spin mixing dynamics in a chromium dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate, after tilting the atomic spins by an angle $\ensuremath{\theta}$ with respect to the magnetic field. Spin mixing is triggered by dipolar coupling, but, once dynamics has started, it is mostly driven by contact interactions. For the particular case $\ensuremath{\theta}=\ensuremath{\pi}/2$, an external spin-orbit coupling term induced by a magnetic gradient is required to enable the dynamics. Then the initial ferromagnetic character of the gas is locally preserved, an unexpected feature that we attribute to large spin-dependent contact interactions.