Knotted Solitons in an Interacting Mixture of a Charged and a Neutral Superfluid for Neutron Stars

Abstract

By making use of the decomposition of U(1) gauge potential theory and the φ-mapping method 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 propose that this system possesses vortex lines and two classes of knotted solitons. The topological charge of the vortex lines are characterized by the Hopf indices and the Brower degrees of φ-mapping, and the knotted solitons are described by nontrivial Hopf invariant and the BF action respectively.