Phenomenological theory of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

A phenomenological model is proposed to describe the behavior of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. In the absence of hyperfine spin-spin interactions, Bose-Einstein condensation leads to a spontaneous magnetization at the same transition temperature. This is the so-called Bose-Einstein ferromagnetism. Including the hyperfine spin interactions, the phase diagram of the spinor condensate in an optical trap is studied and the Gross-Pitaevskii equation is extended. The possibility of checking for the existence of the Bose-Einstein ferromagnetism experimentally is also discussed.