Coreless and singular vortex lattices in rotating spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We theoretically investigate vortex-lattice phases of rotating spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) with the ferromagnetic spin-interaction by numerically solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The spinor BEC under slow rotation can sustain a rich variety of exotic vortices due to the multi-component order parameters, such as the Mermin-Ho and Anderson-Toulouse coreless vortices (the 2-dimensional skyrmion and meron) and the non-axisymmetric vortices with the sifting vortex cores. Here, we present the spin texture of various vortex-lattice states at higher rotation rates and in the presence of the external magnetic field. In addition, the vortex phase diagram is constructed in the plane by the total magnetization $M$ and the external rotation frequency $Ω$ by comparing the free energies of possible vortices. It is shown that the vortex phase diagram in a $M$-$Ω$ plane may be divided into two categories; (i) the coreless vortex lattice formed by the several types of Mermin-Ho vortices and (ii) the vortex lattice filling in the cores with the pure polar (antiferromagnetic) state. In particular, it is found that the type-(ii) state forms the composite lattices of coreless and polar-core vortices. The difference between the type-(i) and type-(ii) results from the existence of the singularity of the spin textures, which may be experimentally confirmed by the spin imaging within polarized light recently proposed by Carusotto and Mueller. We also discussed on the stability of triangular and square lattice states for rapidly rotating condensates.