Mixed bubbles in a binary mixture of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

In mean-field theory, the ground state of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a uniform system is either uniformly mixed or totally separated. Beyond-mean-field effects introduce an additional phase, the mixed-bubble state, in which the two components remain mixed within one of the separated domains. Here we show that a mixed-bubble state can emerge in a binary mixture of spin-1 ${}^{7}{\rm{Li}}$ and ${}^{23}{\rm{Na}}$ BECs even within the mean-field framework. We further demonstrate the existence of a metastable uniformly-mixed state, which undergoes a transition to the mixed-bubble state triggered by a local perturbation.