Baby Skyrmion Strings

Abstract

We provide analytical and numerical evidence of the existence of classically stable, string-like configurations in a 2+1 dimensional analog of the Skyrme model. The model contains a conserved topological charge usually called the baryon number. Our strings are non-topological solitons which have a constant baryon number per unit length. The energy per length containing one baryon is, however, less than the energy of an isolated baryon (radially symmetric ``baby Skyrmion") in a region of the parameter space, which suggests a degree of stability for our configurations. In a limiting case, our configuration saturates a Bogomolnyi-type bound and is degenerate in energy per baryon with the baby Skyrmion. In another limiting case, the energies are still degenerate but do not saturate the corresponding Bogomolnyi-type bound. Nonetheless, we expect the string to be stable here. Both limiting cases are solvable analytically.

Comments: Latex, (revtex), with one figure in a separate postscript file, 12 pages