Vorticity Knot in Two-component Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

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 $π_3(S^2)$ 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 $3\times 10^{-3} eV$.