Finite-temperature ferromagnetic transition in coherently coupled Bose gases

Abstract

A paramagnetic-ferromagnetic quantum phase transition is known to occur at zero temperature in a two-dimensional coherently coupled Bose mixture of dilute ultracold atomic gases provided the interspecies interaction strength is large enough. Here we study the fate of such a transition at finite temperature by performing numerical simulations with the stochastic (projected) Gross-Pitaevskii formalism, which includes both thermal and beyond mean-field effects. By extracting the average magnetization, the magnetic fluctuations and characteristic relaxation frequency (or critical slowing down), we identify a finite-temperature critical line for the transition. We find that the critical point shifts linearly with temperature and, in addition, the three quantities used to probe the transition exhibit a temperature power-law scaling. The scaling of the critical slowing down is found to be consistent with thermal critical exponents and is very well approximated by the square of the spin excitation gap at zero temperature.