Creation of skyrmions in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Summary form only given. The recent experimental success in all-optical trapping of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) opens the prospect of studies into the internal structure of spinor BECs. While in magnetically trapped BECs only one internal degree-of-freedom can be manipulated, an optical confinement allows an entanglement between the center-of-mass dynamics and the internal hyperfine state. One example of such entangled states are skyrmions. Although their flux is vortex-like far away from the line of symmetry, skyrmions do not have an ordinary vortex core due to the spin degree of freedom.