Twisted toroidal vortex solitons in inhomogeneous media with repulsive nonlinearity

Abstract

Toroidal modes in the form of so-called Hopfions, with two independent winding numbers, a hidden one (twist s), which characterizes a circular vortex thread embedded into a three-dimensional soliton, and the vorticity around the vertical axis (m), appear in many fields, including field theory, ferromagnetics, and semi- and superconductors. Such topological states are normally generated in multicomponent systems, or as trapped quasilinear modes in toroidal potentials. We uncover that stable solitons with this structure can be created, without any linear potential, in the single-component setting with the strength of repulsive nonlinearity growing fast enough from the center to the periphery, for both steep and smooth modulation profiles. Toroidal modes with s=1 and vorticity m=0, 1, 2 are produced. They are stable for m=1, and do not exist for s>1. An approximate analytical solution is obtained for the twisted ring with s=1, m=0. Under the application of an external torque, it rotates like a solid ring. The setting can be implemented in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by means of the Feshbach resonance controlled by inhomogeneous magnetic fields.