Phase Transitions of S=1 Spinor Condensates in an Optical Lattice

Daniel Podolsky, Shailesh Chandrasekharan, Ashvin Vishwanath

Published 2007-07-04, updated 2009-11-04Version 4

We study the phase diagram of spin-one polar condensates in a two dimensional optical lattice with magnetic anisotropy. We show that the topological binding of vorticity to nematic disclinations allows for a rich variety of phase transitions. These include Kosterlitz-Thouless-like transitions with a superfluid stiffness jump that can be experimentally tuned to take a continuous set of values, and a new cascaded Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, characterized by two divergent length scales. For higher integer spin bosons S, the thermal phase transition out of the planar polar phase is strongly affected by the parity of S.