Ferromagnetic phase transition in spinor Bose gases

Abstract

The achievement in cooling alkali atomic gases, such as $^{87}$Rb, $^{23}$Na and $^{7}$Li, to quantum degeneracy opens up a way to study magnetism in spinor bosons, because these constituent atoms usually have a hyperfine spin degree of freedom. This article reviews several basic problems related to the ferromagnetic phase transition in spinor atomic Bose gases from a theoretical perspective. After a brief discussion on various possible origins of the ferromagnetic interaction, the phase diagram of the ferromagnetically coupled spinor bosons is investigated. It is found that the ferromagnetic transition occurs always above Bose-Einstein condensation and the Bose condensate is fully polarized. The low-lying collective excitations of the spinor condensate, including spin and density modes, are discussed. The spectrum of the density mode is of the Bogliubov form and the spin wave spectrum has a $k^2$-formed dispersion relation at long wavelengths. The spin-wave stiffness coefficient contains contribut