Skyrmion dynamics and disintegration in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate

Dynamics of skyrmionic spin texture in the spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate is examined by analytical and numerical means. We show the skyrmion (coreless vortex) to be inherently unstable in the sense that the state initially prepared purely within the antiferromagnetic (ferromagnetic) order parameter manifold inevitably evolves into a mixture of both. The vorticity-dependent drift in the presence of the trapping potential also contributes to the disintegration of the initial spin texture manifold. We argue that the notion of a skyrmion as a topologically protected entity becomes ill defined during the dynamical evolution process.