Vortex chain in anisotropic spin-orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates

We investigate the rotating spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates with anisotropic spin-orbit coupling by using the damped projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The anisotropic spin-orbit coupling can cause some vortices to form the vortex chain, where the vortices link up with each other in a line. The formation of the vortex chain starts from very small rotation frequency and coexists with more remanent vortices with the increasing rotation frequency. By increasing the anisotropy of the spin-orbit coupling, the creation of the vortex chain is enhanced, accompanied by the emergence of several types of vortex chain and other vortex configurations. When the vortices of the mF=-1 and mF=+1 components are of synchronous phases, such vortex configurations do not cause any topological excitation in the spin texture.