Stable and Unstable Vortices in Multicomponent Bose-Einstein Condensates

We study the stability and dynamics of vortices in two-species condensates as prepared in the recent JILA experiment [Matthews et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2498 (1999)]. We find that of the two possible configurations, in which one species has vorticity $m=1\mathrm{}$ and the other one has $m=0\mathrm{}$, only one is linearly stable, which agrees with the experimental results. However, it is found that in the unstable case the vortex is not destroyed by the instability, but may be transferred from one species to the other or display complex spatiotemporal dynamics.