Dynamical instability induced domain formation in a spin-1 condensate

Dynamical instability induced domain formation is an important topic in condensate physics, and has been carefully studied recently for a two component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with conserved numbers of atoms for each component\footnote{K. Kasamatsu and M. Tsubota, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 93}, 100402 (2004).}. In this study, we consider the same problem for a spin-1 condensate, where the numbers of atoms for each spin component can change due to the asymmetric spin mixing interaction, or spin exchange collisions of the type $2|F=1,m_F=0\rangle\leftrightarrow |F=1,m_F=-1 \rangle+ |F=1,m_F=1\rangle$. Our theoretical studies can be confirmed by a detailed observation of the off-equilibrium condensate dynamics from a sudden change of an external magnetic field.