Controllable Creation of Line Defects in Bose--Einstein Condensates with Internal Polytope Symmetries

Vorticity has played a fundamental role in physics, spanning a vast range of energy scales. Here, we experimentally create and theoretically study quantized vortices in magnetic phases of a spin-2 Bose--Einstein condensate with discrete internal polytope symmetries that we demonstrate explicitly. These vortices are non-Abelian, and are expected to exhibit unusual collision properties that leave behind conspicuous topological traces in the form of rung vortices. We show how filling the vortex line singularities with atoms in a variety of different phases leads to core structures that possess magnetic interfaces with rich combinations of discrete and continuous symmetries. We also present experimental evidence of time evolution towards fractionally quantized vortices.