Spontaneous magnetization and structure formation in a spin-1 ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate

摘要

Motivated by recent experiments involving the nondestructive imaging of magnetization of a spin-1 Rb-87 Bose gas [J. M. Higbie , Phys. Rev. Lett., 95, 050401 (2005)], we address the question of how the spontaneous magnetization of a ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate occurs in a spin-conserving system. Due to competition between the ferromagnetic interaction and the total spin conservation, various spin structures such as staggered magnetic domains and helical and concentric ring structures are formed, depending on the geometry of the trapping potential.