Stable core symmetries and confined textures for a vortex line in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the existence of stable defect cores with different symmetries and confined Skyrmion textures within vortex lines in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, revealing complex topological structures influenced by Zeeman shifts.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of stable, symmetry-varied defect cores and confined Skyrmion textures in spinor BEC vortices, highlighting their dependence on Zeeman level shifts.

Findings

Stable defect cores with different symmetries are possible.

Confined Skyrmion textures can exist inside vortex cores.

Core structures are sensitive to Zeeman level shifts.

Abstract

We show how a singly quantized vortex can exhibit energetically stable defect cores with different symmetries in an atomic spin-1 polar Bose-Einstein condensate, and how a stable topologically nontrivial Skyrmion texture of lower dimensionality can be confined inside the core. The core isotropy and the stability of the confined texture are sensitive to Zeeman level shifts. The observed structures have analogies, respectively, in pressure-dependent symmetries of superfluid liquid He-3 vortices and in the models of superconducting cosmic strings.