2007/10/29 by P. Van Isacker, Stefan Heinze, S. Heinze · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1751-8113/40/49/014
published as Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical 40 (2007) 14811-14817 · Journal of Physics A, in press
arxiv created 2007/10/29 · openalex publication_date 2007/11/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract. We show that the ground state of a Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms with hyperfine spin f = 2 can be either spin aligned, condensed into pairs of atoms coupled to F = 0, or condensed into triplets of atoms coupled to F = 0. The complete phase diagram is constructed for f = 2 and the generic properties of the phase diagram are obtained for f> 2. PACS numbers: 03.75.Fi, 03.65.Fd If atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) are trapped by optical means [1], their hyperfine spins (or spins) are not frozen in one particular direction but are essentially free but for their mutual interactions. As a result, the atoms do not behave as scalar particles but each of the components of the spin is involved in the formation of the BEC. This raises interesting questions concerning the structure of the condensate and how it depends on the spin exchange interactions between the atoms. Such questions were addressed in a series of theoretical papers by Ho and coworkers [2] who obtained solutions based on a generating function method. In the case of spin-1 atoms the problem of quantum spin mixing was analyzed by Law et al. [3]