Dynamics of a vortex dipole across a magnetic phase boundary in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vortex dipoles behave and transform when crossing magnetic phase boundaries in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, revealing complex topological and dynamical phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces the dynamics of vortex dipoles across magnetic phase boundaries in spinor BECs and analyzes their topological transformations and resulting vortex structures.

Findings

Vortex dipoles penetrate phase boundaries and transform into various spin vortex dipoles.

Different vortex structures such as leapfrogging ferromagnetic-core and half-quantum vortices are observed.

Topological connections of spin wave functions are characterized across phases.

Abstract

Dynamics of a vortex dipole in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate in which magnetic phases are spatially distributed is investigated. When a vortex dipole travels from the ferromagnetic phase to the polar phase, or vice versa, it penetrates the phase boundary and transforms into one of the various spin vortex dipoles, such as a leapfrogging ferromagnetic-core vortex dipole and a half-quantum vortex dipole. Topological connections of spin wave functions across the phase boundary are discussed.