Three-dimensional skyrmions in spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We introduce topologically stable three-dimensional skyrmions in the cyclic and biaxial nematic phases of a spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensate. These skyrmions exhibit exceptionally high mapping degrees resulting from the versatile symmetries of the corresponding order parameters. We show how these structures can be created in existing experimental setups and study their temporal evolution and lifetime by numerically solving the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equations for realistic parameter values. Although the biaxial nematic and cyclic phases are observed to be unstable against transition towards the ferromagnetic phase, their lifetimes are long enough for the skyrmions to be imprinted and detected experimentally.

6 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Optical excitations of Skyrmions, knotted solitons, and defects in atoms
• Majorana representation of adiabatic and superadiabatic processes in three-level systems
• Spin, orbital, Weyl and other glasses in topological superfluids
• A damped point-vortex model for polar-core spin vortices in a ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate
• Topological interfaces crossed by defects and textures of continuous and discrete point group symmetries in spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates
• Hydrodynamic generation of skyrmions in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate
• Dipolar-drift and collective instabilities of skyrmions in crossed nonuniform electric and magnetic fields in a chiral magnetic insulator
• Symmetry classification of uniform states in spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates and neutron ${}^3{P}_2$ superfluids
• A new form of liquid matter: quantum droplets
• Hydrodynamic model of skyrmions and vorticities in the spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate in ferromagnetic phase at finite temperatures