Dynamics of a vortex dipole across a magnetic phase boundary in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate

Dynamics of a vortex dipole in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate in which magnetic phases are spatially distributed is investigated. When a vortex dipole travels from the ferromagnetic phase to the polar phase, or vice versa, it penetrates the phase boundary and transforms into one of the various spin vortex dipoles, such as a leapfrogging ferromagnetic-core vortex dipole and a half-quantum vortex dipole. Topological connections of spin wave functions across the phase boundary are discussed.