Skyrmion excitation in a two-dimensional spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We study the properties of coreless vortices (skyrmions) in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. We find that this excitation is always energetically unstable, it always decays to an uniform spin texture. We obtain the skyrmion energy as a function of its size and position, a key quantity in understanding the decay process. We also point out that the decay rate of a skyrmion with high winding number will be slower. The interaction between skyrmions and other excitation modes are also discussed.