English

Spin superfluidity and magnon BEC

Other Condensed Matter 2015-03-13 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

The spin superfluidity -- superfluidity in the magnetic subsystem of a condensed matter - is manifested as the spontaneous phase-coherent precession of spins first discovered in 1984 in 3He-B. This superfluid current of spins - spin supercurrent - is one more representative of superfluid currents known or discussed in other systems, such as the superfluid current of mass and atoms in superfluid 4He; superfluid current of electric charge in superconductors; superfluid current of hypercharge in Standard Model of particle physics; superfluid baryonic current and current of chiral charge in quark matter; etc. Spin superfluidity can be described in terms of the Bose condensation of spin waves - magnons. We discuss different phases of magnon superfluidity, including those in magnetic trap; and signatures of magnons superfluidity: (i) spin supercurrent, which transports the magnetization on a macroscopic distance more than 1 cm long; (ii) spin current Josephson effect which shows interference between two condensates; (iii) spin current vortex - a topological defect which is an analog of a quantized vortex in superfluids, of an Abrikosov vortex in superconductors, and cosmic strings in relativistic theories; (iv) Goldstone modes related to the broken U(1) symmetry - phonons in the spin-superfluid magnon gas; etc. We also touch the topic of spin supercurrent in general including spin Hall and intrinsic quantum spin Hall effects.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.4889,
  title  = {Spin superfluidity and magnon BEC},
  author = {Yu. M. Bunkov and G. E. Volovik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4889},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

62 pages, 18 figures, prepared as Chapter IV of the book "Novel Superfluids", eds. K. H. Bennemann and J. B. Ketterson

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:02:32.252Z