We numerically simulate the creation process of two-dimensional skyrmionic
excitations in antiferromagnetic spin-1 Bose--Einstein condensates by solving
the full three-dimensional dynamics of the system from the Gross--Pitaevskii
equation. Our simulations reproduce quantitatively the experimental results of
[Choi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 035301 (2012)] without any fitting
parameters. Furthermore, we examine the stability of the skyrmion by computing
the temporal evolution of the condensate in a harmonic potential. The presence
of both the quadratic Zeeman effect and dissipation in the simulations is vital
for reproducing the experimentally observed decay time.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
