Spin-Current Instability at a Magnetic Domain Wall in a Ferromagnetic Superfluid: a Generation Mechanism of Eccentric Fractional Skyrmions

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how spin currents induce instability at magnetic domain walls in spinful superfluids, leading to the generation of eccentric fractional skyrmions with unique textures, contrasting with conventional skyrmion formation.

Contribution

It provides an exact analytical solution for domain walls in ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose--Einstein condensates and reveals a novel mechanism for generating eccentric fractional skyrmions due to spin-current instability.

Findings

Spin current becomes unstable beyond a critical velocity.

Eccentric fractional skyrmions are generated via this instability.

The mechanism differs from conventional skyrmion creation in magnets.

Abstract

Spinful superfluids of ultracold atoms are ideal for investigating the intrinsic properties of spin current and texture because they are realized in an isolated, nondissipative system free from impurities, dislocations, and thermal fluctuations. This study theoretically reveals the impact of spin current on a magnetic domain wall in spinful superfluids. An exact wall solution is obtained in the ferromagnetic phase of a spin-1 Bose--Einstein condensate with easy-axis anisotropy at zero temperature. The bosonic-quasiparticle mechanics analytically show that the spin current along the wall becomes unstable if the velocity exceeds the critical spin-current velocities, leading to complicated situations because of the competition between transverse magnons and ripplons. Our direct numerical simulation reveals that this system has a mechanism to generate an eccentric fractional skyrmion, which has a fractional topological charge, but its texture is not similar to that of a meron. This mechanism is in contrast to the generation of conventional skyrmions in easy-axis magnets. The theoretical findings can be examined in the same situation as in a recent experiment on ultracold atoms. In terms of the universality of spontaneous symmetry breaking, unexplored similar phenomena are expected in different physical systems with the same broken symmetry.