Andreev-Bashkin effect and knot solitons in an interacting mixture of a charged and a neutral superfluid with possible relevance for neutron stars

Abstract

We discuss a mixture of interacting neutral and charged Bose condensates, which is supposed being realized in the interior of neutron stars in the form of a coexistent neutron superfluid and protonic superconductor. We show that in this system, besides ordinary vortices of the ${S}^{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{S}^{1}$ map, the neutron condensate also allows for (meta)stable finite-length knotted solitons, which are characterized by a nontrivial Hopf invariant and in some circumstances may be stabilized by a Faddeev-Skyrme term induced by the drag effect. We also consider a helical protonic flux tube in this system and show that, in contrast, it does not induce a Faddeev-Skyrme term.