Spontaneous magnetic ordering in a ferromagnetic spinor dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We study the spin dynamics of a spin-1 ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate with magnetic dipole-dipole interaction (MDDI) based on the Gross-Pitaevskii and Bogoliubov theories. We find that various magnetic structures such as checkerboards and stripes emerge in the course of the dynamics due to the combined effects of spin-exchange interaction, MDDI, quadratic Zeeman and finite-size effects, and nonstationary initial conditions. However, the short-range magnetic order observed by the Berkeley group [Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 170403 (2008)] is not fully reproduced in our calculations; the periodicity of the order differs by a factor of 3 and the checkerboard pattern eventually dissolves in the course of time. Possible reasons for the discrepancy are discussed.