Gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates with nonzero spin feature multicomponent order parameters that reflect the internal degrees of freedom. They exhibit a rich variety of superfluid and magnetic phenomena similar or complementary to those of superfluid helium-3. The unprecedented degree of manipulability of atomic gases makes spinor condensates a unique playground for exploring symmetry breaking, topological excitations, and the interplay between superfluidity and magnetism. An overview of these subjects is provided.
Gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates with nonzero spin feature multicomponent order parameters that reflect the internal degrees of freedom. They exhibit a rich variety of superfluid and magnetic phenomena similar or complementary to those of superfluid helium-3. The unprecedented degree of manipulability of atomic gases makes spinor condensates a unique playground for exploring symmetry breaking, topological excitations, and the interplay between superfluidity and magnetism. An overview of these subjects is provided.
Bose-Einstein (BE) condensation is a phenomenon in which a macroscopic number of particles occupy a single-particle state. Once a system undergoes BE condensation, a significant fraction of particles behave in lockstep, leading to a number of spectacular macroscopic quantum phenomena. This article delineates fundamental aspects of BE condensates with an emphasis on spin degrees of freedom. Here the gauge and spin degrees of freedom are coupled to produce a rich variety of spinor superfluidity and topological excitations.
In a spinor Bose-Einstein gas, the non-zero hyperfine spin of the gas becomes an accessible degree of freedom. At low temperature, such a gas shows both magnetic and superfluid order, and undergoes both density and spin dynamics. These lecture notes present a general overview of the properties of spinor Bose-Einstein gases. The notes are divided in five sections. In the first, we summarize basic properties of multi-component quantum fluids, focusing on the specific case of spinor Bose-Einstein gases and the role of rotational symmetry in defining their properties. Second, we consider the magnetic state of a spinor Bose-Einstein gas, highlighting effects of thermodynamics and Bose-Einstein statistics and also of spin-dependent interactions between atoms. In the third section, we discuss methods for measuring the properties of magnetically ordered quantum gases and present newly developed schemes for spin-dependent imaging. We then discuss the dynamics of spin mixing in which the spin composition of the gas evolves through the spin-dependent interactions within the gas. We discuss spin mixing first from a microscopic perspective, and then advance to discussing collective and beyond-mean-field dynamics. The fifth section reviews recent studies of the magnetic excitations of quantum-degenerate spinor Bose gases. We conclude with some perspectives on future directions for research.
Spinor Bose gases form a family of quantum fluids manifesting both magnetic order and superfluidity. This article reviews experimental and theoretical progress in understanding the static and dynamic properties of these fluids. The connection between system properties and the rotational symmetry properties of the atomic states and their interactions are investigated. Following a review of the experimental techniques used for characterizing spinor gases, their mean-field and many-body ground states, both in isolation and under the application of symmetry-breaking external fields, are discussed. These states serve as the starting point for understanding low-energy dynamics, spin textures and topological defects, effects of magnetic dipole interactions, and various non-equilibrium collective spin-mixing phenomena. The paper aims to form connections and establish coherence among the vast range of works on spinor Bose gases, so as to point to open questions and future research opportunities.
Liquid helium 4 had been the only bosonic superfluid available in experiments for a long time. This situation was changed in 1995, when a new superfluid was born with the realization of the Bose–Einstein condensation in ultracold atomic gases. The liquid helium 4 is strongly interacting and has no spin; there is almost no way to change its parameters, such as interaction strength and density. The new superfluid, Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC), offers various advantages over liquid helium. On the one hand, BEC is weakly interacting and has spin degrees of freedom. On the other hand, it is convenient to tune almost all the parameters of a BEC, for example, the kinetic energy by spin–orbit coupling, the density by the external potential, and the interaction by Feshbach resonance. Great efforts have been devoted to studying these new aspects, and the results have greatly enriched our understanding of superfluidity. Here we review these developments by focusing on the stability and critical velocity of various superfluids. The BEC systems considered include a uniform superfluid in free space, a superfluid with its density periodically modulated, a superfluid with artificially engineered spin–orbit coupling, and a superfluid of pure spin current. Due to the weak interaction, these BEC systems can be well described by the mean-field Gross–Pitaevskii theory and their superfluidity, in particular critical velocities, can be examined with the aid of Bogoliubov excitations. Experimental proposals to observe these new aspects of superfluidity are discussed.
Spinor Bose gases form a family of quantum fluids manifesting both magnetic order and superfluidity. This article reviews experimental and theoretical progress in understanding the static and dynamic properties of these fluids. The connection between system properties and the rotational symmetry properties of the atomic states and their interactions are investigated. Following a review of the experimental techniques used for characterizing spinor gases, their mean-field and many-body ground states, both in isolation and under the application of symmetry-breaking external fields, are discussed. These states serve as the starting point for understanding low-energy dynamics, spin textures, and topological defects, effects of magnetic-dipole interactions, and various nonequilibrium collective spin-mixing phenomena. The paper aims to form connections and establish coherence among the vast range of works on spinor Bose gases, so as to point to open questions and future research opportunities.
Selected topics on spinor-dipolar aspects of Bose-Einstein condensation are overviewed. Spinor aspects include spin correlations, fragmentation, dynamical symmetries, and quantum mass acquisition. Dipolar aspects include magnetostriction, d-wave collapse, roton-maxon spectrum, supersolidity, and ferrofluidity. Finally, spinor-dipolar aspects concern the Einstein–de Haas effect and spontaneous mass and spin currents in the ground state. Introduction Bose-Einstein condensation is a phenomenon in which a macroscopic number of particles occupy the same single-particle state as a consequence of symmetrization of a many-body wave function and thereby quantum effects are amplified to the macroscopic level. The amplified single-particle state serves as a complex order parameter whose phase behaves as an emergent thermodynamic quantity, with its temporal and spatial variations giving the chemical potential and the superfluid velocity, respectively. If the interparticle interaction is repulsive, a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) acquires stability against excitations out of the condensate because they would cost the Fock exchange energy. This rigidity of the order parameter or the condensate wave function endows a BEC with several remarkable transport properties which are collectively known as superfluidity. In particular, the superfluid fraction can be 100% at zero temperature even though the condensate fraction is depleted due to interparticle interactions. Interparticle interactions also make excited particles phase-locked to the condensate, leading to Bogoliubov quasiparticles, which are the manifestation of phase-coherent particle– hole excitations. When constituent particles have spin degrees of freedom, a BEC features magnetism and spin nematicity which conspire with superfluidity to produce a rich phase diagram. In the absence of an external magnetic field, the mean-field groundstate phase diagram includes two [1, 2], five [3, 4, 5], and eleven phases [6, 7] for spin-1, 2, and 3 BECs, respectively. BECs with spin degrees of freedom are called spinor condensates. Moreover, the magnetic dipole–dipole interaction (MDDI) between atoms lends distinct twists to spinor condensates because it is long-ranged and anisotropic in sharp contrast with other interactions, which are short-ranged and isotropic. In this chapter, we will present a brief overview on the spinordipolar aspects of BEC. An early experimental work of spinor BECs is reviewed in Ref. [8]. Later developments with an emphasis on theoretical aspects are described in Ref. [9]. Many-body physics of polarized dipolar gases is reviewed in Ref. [10].