Analytic models for the density of a ground-state spinor condensate

Abstract

We demonstrate that the ground state of a trapped spin-1 and spin-2 spinor ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) can be well approximated by a single decoupled Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation. Useful analytic models for the ground-state densities of ferromagnetic BECs are obtained from the Thomas-Fermi approximation (TFA) to this decoupled equation. Similarly, for the ground states of spin-1 antiferromagnetic and spin-2 antiferromagnetic and cyclic BECs, some of the spin-component densities are zero, which reduces the coupled GP equation to a simple reduced form. Analytic models for ground-state densities are also obtained for antiferromagnetic and cyclic BECs from the TFA to the respective reduced GP equations. The analytic densities are illustrated and compared with the full numerical solution of the GP equation with realistic experimental parameters.