We demonstrate the existence of the helical vortex solution in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates which can be identified as a twisted vorticity flux. Based on this we argue that the recently proposed knot in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates can be interpreted as a vorticity knot, a vortex ring made of the helical vortex. This picture shows that the knot is made of two quantized vorticity fluxes linked together, whose topology
π3(S2) is fixed by the linking number of two vorticity fluxes. Due to the helical structure the knot has both topological and dynamical stability. We estimate the energy of the lightest knot to be about
3×10−3eV.
We study the topological objects in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates. We compare two competing theories of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates, the popular Gross-Pitaevskii theory, and the recently proposed gauge theory of two-component Bose-Einstein condensate which has an induced vorticity interaction. We show that two theories produce very similar topological objects, in spite of the obvious differences in dynamics. Furthermore we show that the gauge theory of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates, with the
U(1) gauge symmetry, is remarkably similar to the Skyrme theory. Just like the Skyrme theory this theory admits the non-Abelian vortex, the helical vortex, and the vorticity knot. We construct the lightest knot solution in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates numerically, and discuss how the knot can be constructed in the spin-
21 condensate of
87Rb atoms.
We propose two types of topologically stable knot solitons in condensed matters, one in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates and one in two-gap superconductors. We identify the knot in Bose-Einstein condensates as a twisted vorticity flux ring and the knot in two-gap superconductors as a twisted magnetic flux ring. In both cases we show that there is a remarkable interplay between topology and dynamics which transforms the topologcal stability to the dynamical stability, and vise versa. We discuss how these knots can be constructed in the spin-1/2 condensate of
87Rb atoms and in two-gap superconductor of
MgB2.