Superfluidity of spin-1 bosons in optical lattices

In this paper we show that the superfluidity of cold spin--1 Bose atoms of weak interactions in an optical lattice can be realized according to the excitation energy spectrum which is derived by means of Bogliubov transformation. The characteristic of the superfluid-phase spectrum is explained explicitly in terms of the nonvanishing critical velocity, i.e., the Landau criterion. It is observed that critical velocities of superfluid are different for three spin components and, moreover, can be controlled by adjusting the lattice parameters in practical experiments to detect the superfluid phase.