We have analytically solved one-dimensional interacting two-component bosonic gases with spin-orbit (SO) coupling by the Bethe-ansatz method. Through a gauge transformation, the effect of SO coupling is incorporated into a spin-dependent twisted boundary condition. Our result shows that the SO coupling can influence the eigenenergy in a periodical pattern. The interplay between interaction and SO coupling may induce the energy level crossing for the ground state, which leads to a transition from the ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic state.
We introduce a Floquet spinor Bose-Einstein condensate induced by a periodically driven quadratic Zeeman coupling whose frequency is larger than any other energy scales. By examining a spin-1 system available in ultracold atomic gases, we demonstrate that such an external driving field has great effect on the condensate through emergence of a unique spin-exchange interaction. We uncover that the ferromagnetic condensate has several unconventional stationary states and thus exhibits rich continuous phase transitions. On the other hand, the antiferromagnetic condensate is found to possess a nont…
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 magne…
We study the emergence of hysteresis during the process of quantum phase transition from an antiferromagnetic to a phase-separated state in a spin-1 Bose Einstein condensate of ultracold atoms. We explicitly demonstrate the appearance of a hysteresis loop with various quench times showing that it is rate-independent for large magnetizations only. In other cases scaling of the hysteresis loop area is observed, which we explain by using the Kibble-Zurek theory in the limit of small magnetization. The effect of an external harmonic trapping potential is also 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.…
We investigate, both experimentally and theoretically, the quench dynamics of antiferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensates in the vicinity of a zero temperature quantum phase transition at zero quadratic Zeeman shift q. Both the rate of instability and the associated finite wavevector of the unstable modes - show good agreement with predictions based upon numerical solutions to the Bogoliubov de-Gennes equations. A key feature of this work is inclusion of magnetic field inhomogeneities that smooth the phase transition. Once these were removed, we observed a dramatic sharpening of the tra…
We consider a mixture of two species of spin-1 atoms with interspecies spin exchange, which may cooperate or compete with the intraspecies spin exchanges and thus dramatically affect the ground state. It represents a new class of bosonic gases differing from single-species spinor gases. We determine the exact ground states in several parameter regimes, and study the composite structures by using the generating function method generalized here to be applicable to a mixture of two species of spinor gases. The most interesting phase is the so-called entangled Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), whi…
Using effective field theories dictated by the symmetry of the system, as well as microscopic considerations, we map out the magnetic coupling-temperature phase diagrams of spin-1 Bose gases in both two- and three-dimensions. We also determine the nature of all phase boundaries, and critical properties in the case of 2nd order phase transitions at both zero and finite temperatures.
By studying the zero-temperature and nonzero-temperature phase diagrams of the ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Hubbard model under an external magnetic field, we find that the competition between ferromagnetism and the quadratic Zeeman energy yields two superfluid phases, which feature discontinuous first-order phase transitions between them for a strongly spinor Bose gas such as ${}^7$Li, contrary to the corresponding continuum system.
Using a variational method, we derive an exact upper bound for one-magnon excitation energy in ferromagnetic spinor gases, which limits the quantum corrections to the effective mass of a magnon to be positive. We also derive an upper bound for one-magnon excitation energy in lattice systems. The results hold for both Bose and Fermi systems in $d$ dimensions as long as the interaction is local and invariant under spin rotation.
We study a spinor fermionic system under the effect of spin-exchange interaction. We focus on the interplay between the spin-exchange interaction and the effective quadratic Zeeman shift. We examine the static and the dynamic properties of both two- and many-body system. We find that the spin-exchange interaction induces coherent Rabi oscillation in the two-body system, but the oscillation is quickly damped when the system is extended to the many-body case.
We consider an antiferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate in a traverse magnetic field with a fixed macroscopic magnetization. The system exhibits two different critical behaviors corresponding to transitions from polar to broken-axisymmetry and from antiferromagnetic to broken-axisymmetry phases depending on the value of magnetization. We exploit both types of system criticality as a resource in the precise estimation of control parameter value. We quantify the achievable precision by the quantum Fisher information. We demonstrate supersensitivity and show that the precision scales with the n…
We establish a theoretical correspondence between spin-one antiferromagnetic spinor condensates in an external magnetic field and quantum rotor models in an external potential. We show that the rotor model provides a conceptually clear picture of the possible phases and dynamical regimes of the antiferromagnetic condensate. We also show that this mapping simplifies calculations of the condensate's spectrum and wavefunctions. We use the rotor mapping to describe the different dynamical regimes recently observed in $^{23}$Na condensates. We also suggest a way to experimentally observe quantum me…
The one-body density matrix (OBDM) of a strongly interacting spinor quantum gas in one dimension can be written as a summation of products of spatial and spin parts. We find that there is a remarkable connection between the spatial part and the OBDM of a spinless hard-core anyon gas. This connection allows us to efficiently calculate the OBDM of the spinor system with particle numbers much larger than what was previously possible. Given the OBDM, we can easily calculate the momentum distribution of the spinor system, which again is related to the momentum distribution of the hard-core ayone ga…
We report on the observation of half-quantum vortices (HQVs) in the easy-plane polar phase of an antiferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. Using in situ magnetization-sensitive imaging, we observe that pairs of HQVs with opposite core magnetization are generated when singly charged quantum vortices are injected into the condensate. The dynamics of HQV pair formation is characterized by measuring the temporal evolutions of the pair separation distance and the core magnetization, which reveals the short-range nature of the repulsive interactions between the HQVs. We find that spin fluct…
We present an experimental study demonstrating the manipulation of atom-number distributions of spinor gases after nonequilibrium quantum quenches across superfluid to Mott-insulator phase transitions in cubic optical lattices. Our data indicate that atom distributions in individual Mott lobes can be tuned by properly designing quantum quench sequences, which suggests methods of maximizing the fraction of atoms in Mott lobes of even occupation numbers and has applications in attaining different quantum magnetic phases including massively entangled states. Spatial distributions of gases in thre…
We experimentally demonstrate that spin dynamics and the phase diagram of spinor condensates can be conveniently tuned by a two-dimensional optical lattice. Spin population oscillations and a lattice-tuned separatrix in phase space are observed in every lattice where a substantial superfluid fraction exists. In a sufficiently deep lattice, we observe a phase transition from a longitudinal polar phase to a broken-axisymmetry phase in steady states of lattice-confined spinor condensates. The steady states are found to depend sigmoidally on the lattice depth and exponentially on the magnetic fiel…
We have experimentally observed the emergence of spontaneous antiferromagnetic spatial order in a sodium spinor Bose-Einstein condensate that was quenched through a magnetic phase transition. For negative values of the quadratic Zeeman shift, a gas initially prepared in the F = 1, mF = 0 state collapsed into a dynamically evolving superposition of all 3 spin projections, mF = 0, +/-1. The quench gave rise to rich, nonequilibrium behavior where both nematic and magnetic spin waves were generated. We characterized the spatiotemporal evolution through two particle correlations between atoms in ea…
We reveal that the p-wave superfluid can be realized in a mixture of fermionic and F=1 bosonic gases. We derive a general set of the gap equations for gaps in the s- and p-channels. It is found that the spin-spin bose-fermi interactions favor the p-wave pairing and naturally suppress the pairing in the s-channel. The gap equations for the polar phase of p-wave superfluid fermions are numerically solved. It is shown that a pure p-wave superfluid can be observed in a well-controlled environment of atomic physics.
We study topological excitations in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in an elongated double-well optical potential. This system hosts a new topological defect, the spin Josephson vortex (SJV), which forms due to the competition between the inter-well atomic tunneling and short-range ferromagnetic two-body interaction. We identify the spin structure and formation dynamics of the SJV and determine the phase diagram of the system. By exploiting the intrinsic stability of the SJV, we propose a dynamical method to create SJVs under realistic experimental conditions.
Dynamical fermionization refers to the phenomenon in Tonks-Girardeau (TG) gases where, upon release from harmonic confinement, the gas's momentum density profile evolves asymptotically to that of an ideal Fermi gas in the initial trap. This phenomenon has been demonstrated theoretically in hardcore and anyonic TG gases, and recently experimentally observed in a strongly interacting Bose gas. We extend this study to a one dimensional (1D) spinor gas of arbitrary spin in the strongly interacting regime, and analytically prove that the total momentum distribution after the harmonic trap is turned…
We calculate the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) temperature of spin-1 atomic bosons in external magnetic field, taking into account the influence of the quadratic Zeeman effect. In case that the quadratic Zeeman coefficient is positive, the BEC temperature exhibits a nontrivial dependance on the magnetic field and a magnetic-field-induced reentrant phenomenon of BEC is observed. This phenomenon could be well understood by the competition between the linear and quadratic Zeeman effects. Reentrance of BEC in a trapped spinor Bose gas is also discussed.
We report direct measurements of spin transport in a trapped, partially condensed spinor Bose gas. Detailed analyses of spin flux in this out-of-equilibrium quantum gas are performed by monitoring the flow of atoms in different hyperfine spin states. The main mechanisms for motion in this system are exchange scattering and potential energy inhomogeneity, which lead to spin waves in the normal component and domain formation in the condensate. We find a large discrepancy in domain formation timescales with those predicted by potential-driven formation, indicating strong coupling of the condensat…
We present the creation and time evolution of two-dimensional Skyrmion excitations in an antiferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. Using a spin rotation method, the Skyrmion spin textures were imprinted on a sodium condensate in a polar phase, where the two-dimensional Skyrmion is topologically protected. The Skyrmion was observed to be stable on a short time scale of a few tens of ms but to have dynamical instability to deform its shape and eventually decay to a uniform spin texture. The deformed spin textures reveal that the decay dynamics involves breaking the polar phase inside th…
We have experimentally investigated the quench dynamics of antiferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensates in the vicinity of a zero temperature quantum phase transition at zero quadratic Zeeman shift $q$. The rate of instability shows good agreement with predictions based upon solutions to the Bogoliubov de-Gennes equations. A key feature of this work was removal of magnetic field inhomogeneities, resulting in a steep change in behavior near the transition point. The quadratic Zeeman shift at the transition point was resolved to 250 milliHertz uncertainty, equivalent to an energy resolutio…
Although there is a broad consensus on the fact that critical behavior in stacked triangular Heisenberg antiferromagnets --an example of frustrated magnets with competing interactions-- is described by a Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson Hamiltonian with O(3)$\times$O(2) symmetry, the nature of the phase transition in three dimensions is still debated. We show that spin-one Bose gases provide us with a simulator of the O(3)$\times$O(2) model. Using a renormalization-group approach, we argue that the transition is weakly first order and shows pseudoscaling behavior, and give estimates of the pseudocritica…
We investigate the ground state density distributions of anti-ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose gases in one dimensional harmonic potential in the full interacting regimes. The ground state is obtained by diagonalizing the Hamiltonian in the Hilbert space composed of the lowest eigenstates of noninteracting Bose gas and spin components. The study reveals that in the situation of weak spin-dependent interaction the total density profiles evolve from Gaussian-like distribution to a Fermi-like shell structure of $N$ peaks with the increasing of spin-independent interaction. While the increasing spin-exch…
We investigate the ground state properties of anti-ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose gases in one dimensional harmonic potential from the weak repulsion regime to the strong repulsion regime. By diagonalizing the Hamiltonian in the Hilbert space composed of the lowest eigenstates of single particle and spin components, the ground state wavefunction and therefore the density distributions, magnetization distribution, one body density matrix, and momentum distribution for each components are obtained. It is shown that the spinor Bose gases of different magnetization exhibit the same total density profil…
We show that strongly interacting multicomponent gases in one dimension realize an effective spin chain, offering an alternative simple scenario for the study of one-dimensional quantum magnetism in cold gases in the absence of an optical lattice. The spin-chain model allows for an intuitive understanding of recent experiments and for a simple calculation of relevant observables. We analyze the adiabatic preparation of antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic ground states, and show that many-body spin states may be efficiently probed in tunneling experiments. The spin-chain model is valid for more…
Large spin systems can exhibit unconventional types of magnetic ordering different from the ferromagnetic or Néel-like antiferromagnetic order commonly found in spin 1/2 systems. Spin-nematic phases, for instance, do not break time-reversal invariance and their magnetic order parameter is characterized by a second rank tensor with the symmetry of an ellipsoid. Here we show direct experimental evidence for spin-nematic ordering in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms with antiferromagnetic interactions. In a mean field description this order is enforced by locking the relative phas…
We show that the wave function of a one dimensional spinor gas with contact $s$-wave interaction, either bosonic or fermionic, can be mapped to the direct product of the wave function of a spinless Fermi gas with short-range $p$-wave interaction and that of a spin system governed by spin parity projection operators. Applying this mapping to strongly interacting spinor gases, we obtain a generalized spin chain model that captures both the static and dynamics properties of the system. Using this spin chain model, we investigate the breathing mode frequency and the quench dynamics of strongly int…
We investigate the phase transition dynamics of a quasi-2D antiferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate from the easy-axis polar phase to the easy-plane polar phase, which is initiated by suddenly changing the sign of the quadratic Zeeman energy $q$. We observe the emergence and decay of spin turbulence and the formation of half-quantum vortices (HQVs) in the quenched condensate. The characteristic time and length scales of the turbulence generation dynamics are proportional to $|q|^{-1/2}$ as inherited from the dynamic instability of the initial state. In the evolution of the spin turbul…
We have experimentally observed the dynamics of an antiferromagnetic sodium Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) quenched through a quantum phase transition. Using an off-resonant microwave field coupling the F = 1 and F = 2 atomic hyperfine levels, we rapidly switched the quadratic energy shift q from positive to negative values. At q = 0 the system undergoes a transition from a polar to antiferromagnetic phase. We measured the dynamical evolution of the population in the F = 1, m_F = 0 state in the vicinity of this transition point and observed a mixed state of all 3 hyperfine components for q < 0…
We present experimental observations of coherent spin-population oscillations in a cold thermal, Bose gas of spin-1 sodium-23 atoms. The population oscillations in a multi-spatial-mode thermal gas have the same behavior as those observed in a single-spatial-mode antiferromagnetic spinor Bose Einstein condensate. We demonstrate this by showing that the two situations are described by the same dynamical equations, with a factor of two change in the spin-dependent interaction coefficient, which results from the change to particles with distinguishable momentum states in the thermal gas. We compar…
Quantum many-body systems in one dimension (1D) exhibit some peculiar properties. In this article, we review some of our work on strongly interacting 1D spinor quantum gas. First, we discuss a generalized Bose-Fermi mapping that maps the charge degrees of freedom to a spinless Fermi gas and the spin degrees of freedom to a spin chain model. This also maps the strongly interacting system into a weakly interacting one, which is amenable for perturbative calculations. Next, based on this mapping, we construct an ansatz wavefunction for the strongly interacting system, using which many physical qu…
We propose a spin-dependent optical lattice potential that realizes a three-dimensional antiferromagnetic topological insulator in a gas of cold, two-state fermions such as alkaline earths, as well as a model that describes the tight-binding limit of this potential. We discuss the physically observable responses of the gas that can verify the presence of this phase. We also point out how this model can be used to obtain two-dimensional flat bands with nonzero Chern number.
We numerically study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition of a spin-1 spinor Bose gas under the quadratic Zeeman effect. A calculation of the mass and spin superfluid densities shows that (i) the BKT transition occurs only when vortices are classified by the integer group $\mathbb{Z}$, and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ vortices do not contribute to the BKT transition, (ii) the two BKT transition temperatures for mass and spin superfluid densities are different for a positive quadratic Zeeman effect and equal for a negative quadratic Zeeman effect, and (iii) the universal relation of the super…
One-dimensional spinor gases with strong delta interaction fermionize and form a spin chain. The spatial degrees of freedom of this atom chain can be described by a mapping to spinless noninteracting fermions and the spin degrees of freedom are described by a spin-chain model with nearest-neighbor interactions. Here, we compute momentum and occupation-number distributions of up to 16 strongly interacting spinor fermions and bosons as a function of their spin imbalance, the strength of an externally applied magnetic field gradient, the length of their spin, and for different excited states of t…
We show that spinor Bose gases subject to a quadratic Zeeman effect exhibit coexisting superfluidity and spin superfluidity, and study the interplay between these two distinct types of superfluidity. To illustrate that the basic principles governing these two types of superfluidity are the same, we describe the magnetization and particle-density dynamics in a single hydrodynamic framework. In this description spin and mass supercurrents are driven by their respective chemical potential gradients. As an application, we propose an experimentally accessible stationary state, where the two types o…
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 work, 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 y…
Excited-state quantum phase transitions depend on and reveal the structure of the whole spectrum of many-body systems. While they are theoretically well understood, finding suitable signatures and detect them in actual experiments remains challenging. For instance, in spinor gases, excited-state phases have been identified and characterized through a topological order parameter that is challenging to measure in experiments. Here, we propose the Raman-dressed spin-orbit coupled gas as a novel platform to explore excited-state quantum phase transitions. In a weakly-coupled regime, the dressed sy…
Self-trapped droplets stabilized by quantum fluctuations have been experimentally realized in dipolar gases and binary Boson mixtures. We propose spinor Bose gases as another candidate for droplet formation in this work. For spin-1 gas, we find that spin fluctuations give a dilute but self-trapped state for two different order parameters where the mean-field picture predicts collapse. A polar droplet phase can be stabilized by spin fluctuations for both antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic spin-dependent coupling. An antiferromagnetic droplet phase can be stabilized similarly with a negative qu…
The non-equilibrium dynamics of a rapidly quenched spin-1 Bose gas with spin-orbit coupling is studied. By solving the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we show that crystallization of merons can occur in a spinor condensate of ^{87}Rb. Analytic form and stability of the crystal structure are given. Likewise, inverted merons can be created in a spin-polarized spinor condensate of ^{23}Na. Our studies provide a chance to explore the fundamental properties of meron-like matter.
Motivated by recent realizations of spin-1 NaRb mixtures in the experiments, here we investigate heteronuclear magnetism in the Mott-insulating regime. Different from the identical mixtures where the boson (fermion) statistics only admits even (odd) parity states from angular momentum composition, for heteronuclear atoms in principle all angular momentum states are allowed, which can give rise to new magnetic phases. Various magnetic phases can be developed over these degenerate spaces, however, the concrete symmetry breaking phases depend not only on the degree of degeneracy, but also the com…
The dynamics of internal spin, electronic orbital, and nuclear motion states of atoms and molecules have preoccupied the atomic and molecular physics community for decades. Increasingly, such dynamics are being examined within many-body systems composed of atomic and molecular gases. Our findings sometimes bear close relation to phenomena observed in condensed-matter systems, while on other occasions they represent truly new areas of investigation. I discuss several examples of spin dynamics that occur within spinor Bose-Einstein gases, highlighting the advantages of spin-sensitive imaging for…
Josephson junctions are essential ingredients in the superconducting circuits used in many existing quantum technologies. Additionally, ultracold atomic quantum gases have also become essential platforms to study superfluidity. Here, we explore the analogy between superconductivity and superfluidity to present an intriguing effect caused by a thin finite barrier in a quasi-one-dimensional toroidal spinor Bose--Einstein condensate (BEC). In this system, the atomic current density flowing through the edges of the barrier oscillates, such as the electrical current through a Josephson junction in …
We theoretically and numerically investigate the generation of fractional-charge vortex dipoles in spinor condensates with non-zero magnetization. We find that in the antiferromagnetic phase of spin-1 and spin-2 and the cyclic phase of spin-2 condensate with non-zero magnetization coupling of the density (phonon) and a spin-excitation mode results in two critical speeds for vortex-antivortex pair creation in the condensate. As a result, a Gaussian obstacle potential moving across the antiferromagnetic spin-1 or spin-2 and cyclic spin-2 spinor condensates with non-zero magnetization can lead to…
We study the effects of an on-site disorder potential in a gas of spinor (spin-1) ultracold atoms loaded in an optical lattice corresponding to both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spin dependent interactions. Starting with a disordered spinor Bose-Hubbard model (SBHM) on a two dimensional square lattice, we observe the appearance of a Bose glass phase using the fraction of the lattice sites having finite superfluid order parameter and non integer local densities as an indicator. A precise distinction between three different types of phases namely, superfluid (SF), Mott insulator (MI) and …
Many-body systems of identical arbitrary-spin particles, with separable spin and spatial degrees of freedom, are considered. Their eigenstates can be classified by Young diagrams, corresponding to non-trivial permutation symmetries (beyond the conventional paradigm of symmetric--antisymmetric states). The present work obtains (a) selection rules for additional non-separable (dependent on spins and coordinates) $k$-body interactions: the Young diagrams, associated with the initial and the final states of a transition, can differ by relocation of no more than $k$ boxes between their rows; and (b…
We consider a one-dimensional trapped spin-1 Bose gas and numerically explore families of its solitonic solutions, namely antidark-dark-antidark (ADDAD), as well as dark-antidark-dark (DADD) solitary waves. Their existence and stability properties are systematically investigated within the experimentally accessible easy-plane ferromagnetic phase by means of a continuation over the atom number as well as the quadratic Zeeman energy. It is found that ADDADs are substantially more dynamically robust than DADDs. The latter are typically unstable within the examined parameter range. The dynamical e…
In spinor Bose-Einstein condensates, spin-changing collisions are a remarkable proxy to coherently realize macroscopic many-body quantum states. These processes have been, e.g., exploited to generate entanglement, to study dynamical quantum phase transitions, and proposed for realizing nematic phases in atomic condensates. In the same systems dressed by Raman beams, the coupling between spin and momentum induces a spin dependence in the scattering processes taking place in the gas. Here we show that, at weak couplings, such modulation of the collisions leads to an effective Hamiltonian which i…
