Periodic spin textures in a degenerate F=1 87^{87}Rb spinor Bose gas

We report on the spin textures produced by cooling unmagnetized $^{87}$Rb F=1 spinor gases into the regime of quantum degeneracy. At low temperatures, magnetized textures form that break translational symmetry and display short-range periodic magnetic order characterized by one- or two-dimensional spatial modulations with wavelengths much smaller than the extent of the quasi-two-dimensional degenerate gas. Spin textures produced upon cooling spin mixtures with a non-zero initial magnetic quadrupole moment also show ferromagnetic order that, at low temperature, coexists with the spatially modulated structure.Comment: 6 pages, revised substantially following reviewer comments and further analysi

Coherence-enhanced imaging of a degenerate Bose gas

We present coherence-enhanced imaging, an in situ technique that uses Raman superradiance to probe the spatial coherence properties of an ultracold gas. Applying this method, we obtain a spatially resolved measurement of the condensate number and more generally, of the first-order spatial correlation function in a gas of $^{87}$Rb atoms. We observe the enhanced decay of propagating spin gratings in high density regions of a Bose condensate, a decay we ascribe to collective, non-linear atom-atom scattering. Further, we directly observe spatial inhomogeneities that arise generally in the course of extended sample superradiance.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Spontaneous Vortex Lattices in Quasi 2D Dipolar Spinor Condensates

Motivated by recent experiments\cite{BA}\cite{BB}, we study quasi 2D ferromagnetic condensates with various aspect ratios. We find that in zero magnetic field, dipolar energy generates a local energy minimum with all the spins lie in the 2D plane forming a row of {\em circular} spin textures with {\em alternating} orientation, corresponding to a packing of vortices of {\em identical} vorticity in different spin components. In a large magnetic field, the system can fall into a long lived dynamical state consisting of an array of elliptic and hyperbolic Mermin-Ho spin textures, while the true equilibrium is an uniaxial spin density wave with a single wave-vector along the magnetic field, and a wavelength similar to the characteristic length of the long lived vortex array state.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure