We develop a theory for a two-component miscible dipolar condensate in a planar trap. Using numerical solutions and a variational theory we solve for the excitation spectrum and identify regimes where density- and spin-roton excitations are favored. We characterize the various instabilities that can emerge in this system over a wide parameter regime and present results for the stability phase diagram. Importantly this allows us to identify the parameter regimes where a novel roton-immiscibility transition can occur, driven by the softening of the spin-roton excitation.
We develop a theory for a two-component miscible dipolar condensate in a planar trap. Using numerical solutions and a variational theory we solve for the excitation spectrum and identify regimes where density- and spin-roton excitations are favored. We characterize the various instabilities that can emerge in this system over a wide parameter regime and present results for the stability phase diagram. Importantly this allows us to identify the parameter regimes where a novel roton-immiscibility transition can occur, driven by the softening of the spin-roton excitation.
This work concerns a theoretical study of a two-component ultra-cold bosonic gas of polarised magnetic dipolar atoms. The atoms interact by short-ranged contact interactions and long-ranged dipole-dipole interactions. The two components can correspond to two different spin-states of a single atomic species or two different atomic species, as realised in recent experiments. Here, we develop a general theory for the ground states and excitations of a two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. The ground states are described by dipolar Gross-Pitaevskii equations and Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations describe the excitations. We apply these theories to systems in 3D harmonic traps and a uniform planar potential. Specialised numerical methods are developed to provide accurate solutions of these equations, and to deal with the singular dipole-dipole interaction kernel. These methods involve spectral representations based on plane waves and Bessel functions. We also discuss the methods we used for obtaining ground state solutions of the nonlinear Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional. Dipole-dipole interactions can favour spatial structure, as demonstrated in the recent observation of supersolid states of matter in a single-component dipolar gas. In the two-component system these interactions can also favour a ground state with a periodic order in the pseudo-spin density. A two-component system can be either miscible (components overlap) or immiscible (components are separated). Our focus here is in the spin-stripe state, which occurs in a flattened trap geometry and involves an immiscible stripe pattern along one of the weakly trapped or untrapped directions. We examine the dynamical stability conditions of the uniform miscible state in planar confinement, and produce an associated stability phase diagram. We identify the various instabilities and analytical criteria for estimating these. We focus on the occurrence of, and conditions that favour, density-roton or spin-roton excitations, anticipating that the softening of these excitations will lead to structured ground states. To characterize these excitations we introduce density and spin dynamical structure factors, which can be measured in experiments using Bragg spectroscopy. Building on the stability phase diagram we compute ground states where the immiscible state is unstable to spin-rotons, finding triangular and stripe immiscible states with a length scale set by the confinement and interactions. We find that the transition to the stripe state is continuous and coincides with the spin-roton softening in the uniform miscible state. We study the excitations of the spin stripe state which exhibits three gapless excitation branches arising from the spontaneous broken symmetries. We identify a balanced parameter regime, where the excitations exhibit a nonsymmorphic symmetry (a symmetry is nonsymmorphic when it is a combination of point-group operations with nonprimitive lattice translations, i.e. not an integer multiple of lattice constants), which is revealed in the density and spin dynamical structure factors. We also consider the dynamics of the system following a quench from the uniform to immiscible stripe states. In the early time dynamics, a spin-stripe state is formed in a such way that the stripe order only extends over small domains. In subsequent dynamics, these domain sizes grow as the system phase-orders towards its equilibrium state. We identify the relevant topological defects such as disclinations, dislocations and grain boundaries. Using ensembles of large scale simulations we show that dynamical scaling holds for the growth of order.
We characterize the immiscibility-miscibility transition (IMT) of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with dipole-dipole interactions. In particular, we consider the quasi-two-dimensional geometry, where a strong trapping potential admits only zero-point motion in the trap direction, while the atoms are more free to move in the transverse directions. We employ the Bogoliubov treatment of the two-component system to identify both the well-known long-wavelength IMT in addition to a rotonlike IMT, where the transition occurs at finite-wave number and is reminiscent of the roton softening in the single-component dipolar BEC. Additionally, we verify the existence of the roton IMT in the fully trapped, finite systems by direct numerical simulation of the two-component coupled nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii equations.
We develop theory for a flattened dipolar Bose–Einstein condensate produced by harmonic confinement along one direction. The role of both short-ranged contact interactions and long-ranged dipole–dipole interactions is considered, and the dipoles are allowed to be polarized along an arbitrary direction. We discuss the symmetry properties of the condensate and the part of the excitation spectrum determining stability, and introduce two effective interaction parameters that allow us to provide a general description of the condensate properties, rotons, and stability. We diagonalize the full theory to obtain benchmark results for the condensate and quasiparticle excitations, and characterize the exact mean field stability of the system. We provide a unified formulation for a number of approximate schemes to describe the condensate and quasiparticles, including the standard quasi-two-dimensional approximation, two kinds of variational ansatz, and a Thomas–Fermi approximation. Some of these schemes have been widely used in the literature despite not being substantiated against the exact theory. We provide this validation and establish the regimes where the various theories perform well.
Combining two Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) may result in a miscible or immiscible mixture, or even a violent implosion. We theoretically demonstrate that dipolar two-component BECs produce far richer physics than their nondipolar counterparts. Intriguingly, when both components have equivalent dipoles, the transition to immiscibility is largely unaffected by dipolar physics, yet the dipoles maximally affect stability. Conversely, antiparallel dipoles strongly affect miscibility but have little effect on stability. By performing three-dimensional calculations of the ground states and their excitations, we find strong dependencies on the confinement geometry. We explore and elucidate the various phononic and rotonic phase transitions, as well as symmetry-preserving crossovers.
We study theoretically Bose-Einstein condensates with polarized dipolar interactions in anisotropic traps. We map the parameter space by varying the trap frequencies and dipolar interaction strengths and find an irregular-shaped region of parameter space in which density-oscillating condensate states occur, with maximum density away from the trap center. These density-oscillating states may be biconcave (red-blood-cell-shaped), or have two or four peaks. For all trap frequencies, the condensate becomes unstable to collapse for sufficiently large dipole interaction strength. The collapse coincides with the softening of an elementary excitation. When the condensate mode is density oscillating, the character of the softening excitation is related to the structure of the condensate. We classify these excitations by linear and angular characteristics. We also find excited solutions to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, which are always unstable.
Superfluids with a tendency towards periodic crystalline order have both a phonon and roton like spectrum of collective modes. The softening of the roton spectrum provides one route to a supersolid. We show that roton softening occurs in 87Rb spinor condensates once dipolar interactions and spin dynamics are taken into account. By including the effects of a quasi-two-dimensional geometry and rapid Larmor precession, we show a dynamical instability develops in the collective mode spectrum at finite wavevectors. We construct phase diagrams showing a variety of instabilities as a function of the direction of the magnetic field and strength of the quadratic Zeeman shift. Our results provide a possible explanation of current experiments in the Berkeley group Phys. Rev. Lett. 100:170403 (2008).