Itinerant magnetism in spin-orbit coupled Bose gases

Understand

Phases of matter are conventionally characterized by order parameters describing the type and degree of order in a system.

• For example, crystals consist of spatially ordered arrays of atoms, an order that is lost as the crystal melts.
• Like- wise in ferromagnets, the magnetic moments of the constituent particles align only below the Curie temperature, TC.
• These two examples reflect two classes of phase transitions: the melting of a crystal is a first-order phase transition (the crystalline order vanishes abruptly) and the onset of magnetism is a second- order phase transition (the magnetization increases continuously from zero as the temperature falls below TC).