Abstract
We consider a spinor condensate of atoms in the hyperfine state confined in an optical dipole trap. Putting initially all atoms in the component, we find that the system evolves toward a state of thermal equilibrium with kinetic energy equally distributed among all magnetic components. We show that this process is dominated by the dipolar interaction of magnetic spins rather than spin-mixing contact potential. Our results show that because of a dynamical separation of magnetic components, the spin-mixing dynamics in the condensate is governed by the dipolar interaction which plays no role in a single-component rubidium system in a magnetic trap.
6 More- Received 13 January 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.033604
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