Spin-mixing dynamics of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We study the spin-mixing dynamics of an $f=1$ spinor condensate. We show that the dynamics is sensitive to the relative phase and particle number distribution among the individual components of the condensate, and find that complex structures can develop in the density profiles during the time evolution. We investigate the different time scales of the spin-mixing process and their dependence on the total particle number.