Multi-second magnetic coherence in a single domain spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

We describe a compact, robust and versatile system for studying the macroscopic spin dynamics in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. Condensates of Rb-87 are produced by all-optical evaporation in a 1560 nm optical dipole trap, using a non-standard loading sequence that employs an ancillary 1529 nm beam for partial compensation of the strong differential light-shift induced by the dipole trap itself. We use near-resonant Faraday rotation probing to non-destructively track the condensate magnetization, and demonstrate few-Larmor-cycle tracking with no detectable degradation of the spin polarization. In the ferromagnetic F = 1 ground state, we observe the spin orientation between atoms in the condensate is preserved, such that they precess all together like one large spin in the presence of a magnetic field. We characterize this dynamics in terms of the single-shot magnetic coherence times T-1 and T-2*, and observe them to be of several seconds, limited only by the residence time of the atoms in the trap. At the densities used, this residence is restricted only by one-body losses set by the vacuum conditions.