Spontaneous magnetization and structure formation in a spin-1 ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate

Motivated by recent experiments involving the non-destructive imaging of magnetization of a spin-1 87Rb Bose gas (Higbie et al., cond-mat/0502517), we address the question of how the spontaneous magnetization of a ferromagnetic BEC occurs in a spin-conserving system. Due to competition between the ferromagnetic interaction and the total spin conservation, various spin structures such as staggered magnetic domains, and helical and concentric ring structures are formed, depending on the geometry of the trapping potential.