Breaking of chiral symmetry and spontaneous rotation in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Feb 17;96(6):065302. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.065302. Epub 2006 Feb 15.

Abstract

We show that a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate with ferromagnetic interactions spontaneously generates a topological spin texture, in which the m = +/- 1 components of the magnetic sublevels form vortices with opposite circulations. This phenomenon originates from an interplay between ferromagnetic interactions and spin conservation.