Macroscopic properties of triplon Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper investigates the macroscopic properties of triplon Bose-Einstein condensates in magnetic insulators, emphasizing the importance of anomalous averages and predicting an instability near a critical magnetic field.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov analysis of triplon BECs, highlighting the role of anomalous averages and predicting observable instabilities.

Findings

Anomalous averages are crucial for condensate properties.

Condensate becomes unstable near a critical magnetic field.

Magnetic susceptibility diverges at the instability threshold.

Abstract

Magnetic insulators can be characterized by a gap separating the singlet ground state from the lowest energy triplet, S=1 excitation. If the gap can be closed by the Zeeman interaction in applied magnetic field, the resulting S=1 quasiparticles, triplons, can have concentrations sufficient to undergo the Bose-Einstein condensates transition. We consider macroscopic properties of the triplon Bose-Einstein condensates in the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approximation taking into account the anomalous averages. We prove that these averages play the qualitative role in the condensate properties. As a result, we show that with the increase in the external magnetic field at a given temperature, the condensate demonstrates an instability related to the appearance of nonzero phonon damping and a change in the characteristic dependence of the speed of sound on the magnetic field. The calculated magnetic susceptibility diverges when the external magnetic field approaches this instability threshold, providing a tool for the experimental verification of this approach.