Dynamics of Dipolar Spinor Condensates.pdfVIP

Dynamics of Dipolar Spinor Condensates Rong Cheng, J.-Q. Liang, Yunbo Zhang∗ 5 Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Physics, 0 0 Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, P. R. China 2 n (Dated: February 2, 2008) u J Abstract 4 2 We study the semiclassical dynamics of a spinor condensate with the magnetic dipole-dipole in- ] teraction included. The time evolution of the population imbalance and the relative phase among r e h different spin components depends greatly on the relative strength of interactions as well as on the t o . initial conditions. The interplay of spin exchange and dipole-dipole interaction makes it possible to t a m manipulate the atomic population on different components, leading to the phenomena of sponta- - d neous magnetization and Macroscopic Quantum Self Trapping. Simple estimate demonstrates that n o these effects are accessible and controllable by modifying the geometry of the trapping potential. c [ 1 PACS numbers: 03.75.Kk, 03.75.Mn, 03.75.Nt, 05.30.Jp v 0 3 6 6 0 5 0 / t a m - d n o c : v i X r a 1 I. INTRODUCTION One of the current experimental advances of considerable importance in the context of ultracold atoms is the demonstration of multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In particular several groups have created spinor condensates of 23Na atoms [1] and 87Rb atoms [2] by transferring spin polarized condensates into far-off-resonance optical dipole traps, where the spin degree of freedom becomes active and the spinor nature of the condensates is manifested. The spin-mixing dynamics and its dependence on the magnetic field have been