In this thesis, we have investigated several fluctuation-driven phenomena in ultracold spinor Bose gases. In Bose-Einstein condensates of hyperfine spin-two (F=2) atoms, it is shown that zero-point quantum fluctuations completely lift the accidental continuous degeneracy in quantum spin nematic phases predicted by mean field analysis, and these fluctuations select out two distinct spin nematic states with higher symmetries. It is further shown that fluctuations can drive a novel type of coherent spin dynamics which is very sensitive to the variation of quantum fluctuations controlled by magnetic fields or potential depths in optical lattices. These results have indicated fundamental limitations of precision measurements based on mean field theories. In addition, fluctuation-driven coherent spin dynamics studied here is a promising tool to probe correlated fluctuations in many body systems. In another system -- a two-dimension superfluid of spin-one (F=1) Na²³ atoms -- we have investigated spin correlations associated with half quantum vortices. It is shown that when cold atoms become superfluid below a critical temperature a unique nonlocal topological order emerges simultaneously due to fluctuations in low dimensional systems. Our simulation have indicated that there exists a nonlocal softened pi-spin disclination structure associated with a half-quantum vortex although spin correlations are short ranged. We have also estimated fluctuation-dependent critical frequencies for half-quantum vortex nucleation in rotating optical traps. These results indicate that the strongly fluctuating ultracold spinor system is a promising candidate for studying topological orders that are the focus of many other fields.
In this thesis, we have investigated several fluctuation-driven phenomena in ultracold spinor Bose gases. In Bose-Einstein condensates of hyperfine spin-two (F=2) atoms, it is shown that zero-point quantum fluctuations completely lift the accidental continuous degeneracy in quantum spin nematic phases predicted by mean field analysis, and these fluctuations select out two distinct spin nematic states with higher symmetries. It is further shown that fluctuations can drive a novel type of coherent spin dynamics which is very sensitive to the variation of quantum fluctuations controlled by magnetic fields or potential depths in optical lattices. These results have indicated fundamental limitations of precision measurements based on mean field theories. In addition, fluctuation-driven coherent spin dynamics studied here is a promising tool to probe correlated fluctuations in many body systems. In another system -- a two-dimension superfluid of spin-one (F=1) Na²³ atoms -- we have investigated spin correlations associated with half quantum vortices. It is shown that when cold atoms become superfluid below a critical temperature a unique nonlocal topological order emerges simultaneously due to fluctuations in low dimensional systems. Our simulation have indicated that there exists a nonlocal softened pi-spin disclination structure associated with a half-quantum vortex although spin correlations are short ranged. We have also estimated fluctuation-dependent critical frequencies for half-quantum vortex nucleation in rotating optical traps. These results indicate that the strongly fluctuating ultracold spinor system is a promising candidate for studying topological orders that are the focus of many other fields.
In this thesis, we investigate strongly correlated phenomena in quantum spin systems. In the first part of this work, we study geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets (AFMs). Generalizing the SU(2) Heisenberg Hamiltonian to Sp(N) symmetry, we obtain, in the large-N limit, the mean-field phase diagrams for the planar pyrochlore and cubic AFMs. We then use gauge theories to consider fluctuation effects about their respective mean-field configurations. We find, in addition to conventional Neel states, a plethora of novel magnetically disordered phases: two kinds of spin liquids, Z2 in 2+1D and U(1)in 3+1D, and several valence bond solids such as two and three-dimensional plaquette and columnar singlet states. We use the same approach to study the diamond lattice AFM which possesses extended classical ground state degeneracy. We demonstrate that quantum and entropic fluctuations lift this degeneracy in different ways. In the second part of the thesis, we study ultracold spinor atoms confined in optical lattices. We first demonstrate the feasibility of experimental realization of rotor models using ultracold spin-one Bose atoms in a spin-dependent and disordered optical lattice. We show that the ground state of such disordered rotor models with quadrupolar interactions can exhibit biaxial nematic ordering in the disorder-averaged sense, and suggest an imaging experiment to detect the biaxial nematicity in such systems. Finally, using variational wavefunction methods, we study the Mott phases and superfluid-insulator transition of spin-three bosons in an optical lattice with an anisotropic two dimensional optical trap. We chart out the phase diagrams for Mott states with n = 1 and n = 2 atoms per lattice site. We show that the long-range dipolar interaction stabilizes a state characterized by antiferromagnetic chains made of ferromagnetically aligned spins. We also obtain the mean-field phase boundary for the superfluid-insulator transition, and show that inside the superfluid phase and near the superfluid-insulator phase boundary, the system undergoes a first order antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic spin ordering transition.
Ultra-cold spinor Bose gases present rich physics due to the special combination of superfluidity and magnetism in a quantum system. This system was first realized in 1998 by confining a Bose-Einstein condensate in an all-optical trap.\nIn this thesis, we consider the fluctuations of observable quantities in a spin-1 Bose gas. Understanding how fluctuations arise due to the spin excitations of the condensate is important because it offers an insight into how measurement noise reveals the many-body physics of the system.\nTo begin, we present the mean-field and Bogoliubov theory of a uniform spin-1 Bose gas subject to a constant magnetic field, describing the condensate and its low-energy collective excitations.\nWe then develop a formalism to describe the fluctuations in a general density-like observable. We start from the two-point correlation function and cast it in the form of a generalised static structure factor determined by the three Bogoliubov quasiparticle excitation branches. We derive analytic results for the fluctuation amplitudes and the temperature-dependent static structure factors for observables of total density and the three spin densities.\nFor all four magnetic phases, we analyse the spinor order parameter and quasiparticle spectra while numerically mapping out the fluctuation amplitudes and static structure factors for the total and spin density operators.\nWe describe the fluctuations in experimental measurements made within finite cells, which is an important step to making meaningful predictions for experiments. We consider cylindrical cells and gaussian cells as two limiting cases. We apply this analysis to an experimentally realisable system of a quasi-2D spinor gas in a harmonic trap, comparing extensive numeric results with analytic limits.
Temporal evolution of a macroscopic condensate of ultracold atoms is usually driven by mean-field potentials, either due to scattering between atoms or due to coupling to external fields; and coherent quantum dynamics of this type have been observed in various cold atom experiments. In this paper, we report results of studies of a class of quantum spin dynamics which are purely driven by zero point quantum fluctuations of spin collective coordinates. Unlike the usual mean-field coherent dynamics, quantum-fluctuation-controlled spin dynamics (or QFCSD) studied here are very sensitive to variation of quantum fluctuations and the corresponding driving potentials induced by zero point motions can be tuned by four to five orders of magnitude using optical lattices. These dynamics have unique dependence on optical lattice potential depths and quadratic Zeeman fields. We also find that thermal fluctuations generally can further enhance the induced potentials although the enhancement in deep optical lattices is much less substantial than in traps or shallow lattices. QFCSD can be potentially used to calibrate quantum fluctuations and investigate correlated fluctuations and various universal scaling properties near quantum critical points.
We have studied spin structures of fluctuation-driven fractionalized vortices and topological spin order in 2D nematic superfluids of cold sodium atoms. Our Monte Carlo simulations suggest a softened π-spin disclination structure in a half-quantum vortex when spin correlations are short ranged; in addition, calculations indicate that a unique non-local topological spin order emerges simultaneously as cold atoms become a superfluid below a critical temperature. We have also estimated fluctuation-dependent critical frequencies for half-quantum vortex nucleation in rotating optical traps and discussed probing these excitations in experiments.
In this thesis, we study theoretically and in experimentally the properties of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates with antiferromagnetic interactions realized in the ultra-cold sodium gases confined in optical dipole traps. We present in detail how to realize, diagnose and control the spinor Bose-Einstein condensates in our experiment. In order to describe the condensate, a mean-field theory is first adopted. This theory predicts a phase transition when changing the magnetic field B. The predictions of the mean-field theory agree very well with most of our experimental results, including the values of the critical magnetic field Bc, asymptotic values of n0 (relative atom number in mF=0 state) at large B and the phase diagram of n0. However, for small magnetization and small magnetic fields, we find abnormally large fluctuations (super-Poissonian) of n0. In order to describe these large fluctuations, we develop a full quantum statistical description for the spinor condensate at finite temperature. To describe uncondensed thermal atoms (also present in the same trap), we use the ``semi-ideal" Hartree-Fock approximation to deal with the interactions between the condensate atoms and the thermal ones. The experimental results lead us to introduce two kinds of temperatures, the ``spin temperature" Ts and the ``kinetic temperature" Tk with Ts≪Tk, characterizing respectively the fluctuaitons of the condensate spin and the thermal gas. We conclude that the system is reaching a quasi-equilibrium states, where different degrees of freedom reach equilibrium by separate mechanisms but where the mutual thermalization does not occur over the lifetime of the cloud.
In this thesis, we present some experiments realized with ultracold gases of sodium atoms, trapped at the intersect between two laser beams. At very low temperature, the discretization of energy and the indistinguishability of particles, lead to a new state of matter, a Bose-Einstein condensate. This remarkable phenomenon was initially introduced to describe an ideal gas, that is to say with no interactions between its constituents. Here, we are interested in the effects of the interactions between the atoms. More precisely, our atoms carry a spin 1, and we focus on the collective spin state, in a regime where the spatial degrees of freedom are frozen. Two important results that we present were obtained by embedding the condensate in a nearly vanishing magnetic field. In that regime, interactions dominate and favor the emergence of strongly correlated states. In a first series of experiment, the magnetic field is suddenly decreased to bring the system out-of-equilibrium. The ensuing relaxation dynamics leads to a stationnary state that can be well described by a Gibbs ensemble. In a second experiment, the field is slowly reduced, in order to follow the ground state of the system. We thereby produce a fragmented condensate, which possesses the remarkable feature of being invariant upon spin rotations. The restoration of this symmetry, always broken by single (i.e. nonfragmented) condensates, is driven by the pairing of atoms in singlet states.