Dartmouth Events

Abstract: Knots are familiar entities that appear at a captivating nexus of art, technology, mathematics,
and science. Following a lengthy period of theoretical investigation and development, they have
recently attracted great experimental interest in contexts ranging from knotted DNA and
nanostructures to vortex knots in classical fluids. In this talk I will discuss the first
controlled creation and detection of knot solitons in a quantum fluid, a spinor Bose-Einstein
condensate. Our observations establish an experimental foundation for future studies of the
stability, dynamics, applications, of knot solitons within quantum systems. The knot solitons
themselves provide a striking experimental demonstration of the celebrated Hopf fibration, which
unites many seemingly unrelated physical phenomena.