Physical Review A
Stable knotted structure in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates with spin-orbit coupling
Yong-Kai Liu, Yun Liu, Shi-Jie Yang
Abstract
The recent experimental creation of knotted solitons in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates opens an interesting avenue for exploring the stability and dynamics of knot solitons. Knotted and helical vortices can be accommodated in spin-orbit-coupled antiferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates. We demonstrate the stability of these topological structures via numerical simulations of the corresponding Gross-Pitaevskii equation. By changing the strength of the spin-orbit coupling, we find that the ground state undergoes a change from a knotted spin texture to a helical spin texture. Our results reveal that these types of topological object are experimentally realizable in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates.