Spinor Bosonic Atoms in Optical lattices: Symmetry breaking and fractionalization

We study superfluid and Mott insulator phases of cold spin-1 Bose atoms with antiferromagnetic interactions in an optical lattice, including a usual polar condensate phase, a condensate of singlet pairs, a crystal spin nematic phase, and a spin singlet crystal phase. We suggest a possibility of exotic fractionalized phases of spinor BEC and discuss them in the language of topological defect condensation and $Z_2$ lattice gauge theory.