Normal-superfluid interaction dynamics in a spinor Bose gas

Coherent behavior of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates is studied in the presence of a significant uncondensed (normal) component. Normal-superfluid exchange scattering leads to a near-perfect local alignment between the spin fields of the two components. Through this spin locking, spin-domain formation in the condensate is vastly accelerated as the spin populations in the condensate are entrained by large-amplitude spin waves in the normal component. We present data evincing the normal-superfluid spin dynamics in this regime of complicated interdependent behavior.