False vacuum Skyrmions revisited

TL;DR

This paper investigates classical static Skyrmion solutions with false vacuum potentials, revealing metastable configurations with true vacuum cores and regions of negative topological charge density for degrees 3, 5, and 6.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive numerical analysis of Skyrmions with false vacuum potentials, including global energy minimizers and novel internal structures.

Findings

Existence of metastable Skyrmions with true vacuum cores

Identification of negative topological charge density regions in certain degrees

Construction of energy-minimizing solutions for topological degrees 1 to 6

Abstract

We consider the classical static soliton solutions of the Skyrme model with false vacuum potential. We make use of fully three-dimensional relaxation calculations to construct global energy minimizers in the sectors of topological degrees from $Q=1$ to $Q=6$. These solutions may be metastable, they contain a domain of true vacuum inside the core. Further, we explore small regions of negative topological charge density which appear for the Skyrmions of degrees $Q=3,5,6$.