Inducing spin-order with an impurity: phase diagram of the magnetic Bose polaron

Abstract

Abstract We investigate the formation of magnetic Bose polaron, an impurity atom dressed by spin-wave excitations, in a one-dimensional spinor Bose gas. Within an effective potential model, the impurity is strongly confined by the host excitations which can even overcome the impurity-medium repulsion leading to a self-localized quasi-particle state. The phase diagram of the attractive and self-bound repulsive magnetic polaron, repulsive non-magnetic (Fröhlich-type) polaron and impurity-medium phase-separation regimes is explored with respect to the Rabi-coupling between the spin components, spin–spin interactions and impurity-medium coupling. The residue of such magnetic polarons decreases substantially in both strong attractive and repulsive branches with strong impurity-spin interactions, illustrating significant dressing of the impurity. The impurity can be used to probe and maneuver the spin polarization of the magnetic medium while suppressing ferromagnetic spin–spin correlations. It is shown that mean-field theory fails as the spinor gas approaches immiscibility since the generated spin-wave excitations are prominent. Our findings illustrate that impurities can be utilized to generate controllable spin–spin correlations and magnetic polaron states which can be realized with current cold atom setups.