Core Structure and Non-Abelian Reconnection of Defects in a Biaxial Nematic Spin-2 Bose-Einstein Condensate

Abstract

We calculate the energetic structure of defect cores and propose controlled methods to imprint a nontrivially entangled vortex pair that undergoes non-Abelian vortex reconnection in a biaxial nematic spin-2 condensate. For a singular vortex, we find three superfluid cores in addition to depletion of the condensate density. These exhibit order parameter symmetries that are different from the discrete symmetry of the biaxial nematic phase, forming an interface between the defect and the bulk superfluid. We provide a detailed analysis of phase mixing in the resulting vortex cores and find an instability dependent upon the orientation of the order parameter. We further show that the spin-2 condensate is a promising system for observing spontaneous deformation of a point defect into an "Alice ring" that has so far avoided experimental detection.

Published manuscript (10 pages, 5 figures, includes Supplemental Material)

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Controlled creation of a singular spinor vortex by circumventing the Dirac belt trick
• Fractional Skyrmion molecules in a $\mathbb{C}{P}^{N-1}$ model
• Non-Abelian Half-Quantum Vortices in ${}^3{P}_2$ Topological Superfluids
• Non-Abelian Anyons and Non-Abelian Vortices in Topological Superconductors
• Core structures of vortices in Ginzburg-Landau theory for neutron ${}^3{P}_2$ superfluids
• Proximity effects of vortices in neutron ${}^3{P}_2$ superfluids in neutron stars: Vortex core transitions and covalent bonding of vortex molecules
• Topological Superfluid Defects with Discrete Point Group Symmetries
• Topological atom optics and beyond with knotted quantum wavefunctions
• Topological interfaces crossed by defects and textures of continuous and discrete point group symmetries in spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates
• Symmetry classification of uniform states in spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates and neutron ${}^3{P}_2$ superfluids