Simulating frustrated magnetism with spinor Bose gases

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that spinor Bose gases can simulate frustrated magnetism with O(3)×O(2) symmetry, revealing a weakly first-order phase transition with pseudoscaling behavior, and provides experimentally testable estimates for pseudocritical exponents.

Contribution

It introduces spinor Bose gases as a quantum simulator for frustrated magnetism and uses renormalization-group analysis to characterize the phase transition nature.

Findings

Transition is weakly first order with pseudoscaling behavior.

Estimates of pseudocritical exponent ν for different atom gases.

Provides experimentally testable predictions for phase transition behavior.

Abstract

Although there is a broad consensus on the fact that critical behavior in stacked triangular Heisenberg antiferromagnets --an example of frustrated magnets with competing interactions-- is described by a Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson Hamiltonian with O(3)$\times$O(2) symmetry, the nature of the phase transition in three dimensions is still debated. We show that spin-one Bose gases provide us with a simulator of the O(3)$\times$O(2) model. Using a renormalization-group approach, we argue that the transition is weakly first order and shows pseudoscaling behavior, and give estimates of the pseudocritical exponent $\nu$ in $^{87}$Rb, $^{41}$K and $^7$Li atom gases which can be tested experimentally.