Classifying vortices in S = 3 Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

Motivated by the recent realization of a 52Cr Bose-Einstein condensate, we consider the phase diagram of a general spin-three condensate as a function of its scattering lengths. We classify each phase according to its reciprocal spinor, using a method developed in a previous work. We show that such a classification can be naturally extended to describe the vortices for a spinor condensate by using the topological theory of defects. To illustrate, we systematically describe the types of vortex excitations for each phase of the spin-three condensate.