Thermoskyrmions

TL;DR

This paper explores how thermal effects can stabilize skyrmions in simplified models of the electroweak sector, suggesting they could be stable dark matter candidates within the Standard Model framework.

Contribution

It demonstrates that thermal effects can stabilize classically unstable skyrmions in toy models of the electroweak sector, opening new avenues for dark matter research.

Findings

Thermal effects stabilize skyrmions at finite temperature.

Skyrmions could be stable in the quantum effective action of the Standard Model.

Potential implications for dark matter without new physics.

Abstract

Skyrmions are stable and topologically non-trivial field configurations that behave like localized particles. They appear in the chiral effective theory for pions, where they correspond to the baryon states, and might also exist in the electroweak theory, in the presence of certain effective interactions. In this paper, focusing on toy models that capture different limits of the electroweak sector of the Standard Model (SM), we show that skyrmions not classically stable at zero temperature can be stabilized by thermal effects. This result motivates the study of skyrmions in the quantum effective action of the SM, potentially implying the existence of dark matter without new physics.