Spontaneous demagnetization of a dipolar spinor Bose gas at ultra-low magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper reports on the observation of spontaneous demagnetization in a dipolar spinor Bose gas of chromium atoms at ultra-low magnetic fields, revealing a phase transition driven by dipole-dipole interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first experimental observation of a phase transition in a spinor Bose gas caused by magnetic dipole-dipole interactions at ultra-low magnetic fields.

Findings

Identified a phase transition between ferromagnetic and unpolarized phases.

Observed magnetization dynamics driven by dipole-dipole interactions.

Showed that interactions can dominate over Zeeman effects at ultra-low fields.

Abstract

Quantum degenerate Bose gases with an internal degree of freedom, known as spinor condensates, are natural candidates to study the interplay between magnetism and superfluidity. In the spinor condensates made of alkali atoms studied so far, the spinor properties are set by contact interactions, while magnetization is dynamically frozen, due to small magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. Here, we study the spinor properties of S=3 $^{52}$Cr atoms, in which relatively strong dipole-dipole interactions allow changes in magnetization. We observe a phase transition between a ferromagnetic phase and an unpolarized phase when the magnetic field is quenched to an extremely low value, below which interactions overwhelm the linear Zeeman effect. The BEC magnetization changes due to magnetic dipole-dipole interactions that set the dynamics. Our work opens up the experimental study of quantum magnetism with free magnetization using ultra-cold atoms.