Universal few-body physics in resonantly interacting spinor condensates

TL;DR

This paper explores the impact of three-body interactions and Efimov physics on strongly correlated spinor condensates, revealing universal effects on spin dynamics and quantum phase behavior in these complex quantum systems.

Contribution

It introduces a hyperspherical adiabatic approach to analyze Efimov physics in spinor condensates, highlighting the role of three-body effects in strongly correlated regimes.

Findings

Efimov effect influences spin dynamics significantly.

Universal three-body contributions affect quantum phase structure.

Characterization of three-body mean-field parameters for spinor condensates.

Abstract

Optical trapping techniques allow for the formation of bosonic condensates with internal degrees of freedom, so-called spinor condensates. Mean-field models of spinor condensates highlight the sensitivity of the quantum phases of the system to the relative strength of the two-body interaction in the different spin-channels. Such a description captures the regime where these interactions are weak. In the opposite and largely unexplored regime of strongly correlated spinor condensates, three-body interactions can play an important role through the Efimov effect, producing possible novel phases. Here, we study the three-body spinor problem using the hyperspherical adiabatic representation for spin-1, -2 and -3 condensates in the strongly-correlated regime. We characterize the Efimov physics for such systems and the relevant three-body mean-field parameters. We find that the Efimov effect can strongly affect the spin dynamics and three-body mean-field contributions to the possible quantum phases of the condensate through universal contributions to scattering observables.