Synthetic nuclear Skyrme matter in imbalanced Fermi superfluids with a multicomponent order parameter

Abstract

Cooper-pair formation in a system of imbalanced fermions leads to the well-studied Fulde-Ferrell or Larkin-Ovchinnikov superfluid state. In the former case the system forms spontaneous phase gradients while in the latter case it forms a stripelike or a crystal-like density gradient. We show that in multicomponent imbalanced mixtures, the superfluid states can be very different from the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov states. The system generates gradients in both densities and phases by forming three-dimensional vortex-antivortex lattices or lattices of linked vortex loops. The solutions share some properties with the ostensibly unrelated Skyrme model of densely packed baryons and can be viewed as synthetic realization of nuclear Skyrme matter.