Vortons in two component Bose-Einstein condensates

Ever since Witten's paper on superconducting cosmic strings, there has been an interest in strings with a non-trivial core structure. In particular, it is believed that such strings can form loops, known as vortons, which are stabilized against shrinking by current and charge trapped on the string world-sheet. In this paper, we show that analogous non-trivial vortices and stable vortex loops exist in non-relativistic two-component atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. In contrast with well-studied superfluid He-4, where similar vortex rings can be stable due to Magnus force only if they move, the vortex rings in two-component BECs can be stable even if they are at rest. We speculate that such vortons may have been already observed in the laboratory. Thus, it may be possible to test predictions regarding vortons in cosmology and astrophysics by doing controlled experiments in two-component BECs.