Magnetic Skyrmions at Critical Coupling

Abstract

We introduce a family of models for magnetic skyrmions in the plane for which infinitely many solutions can be given explicitly. The energy defining the models is bounded below by a linear combination of degree and total vortex strength, and the configurations attaining the bound satisfy a first order Bogomol’nyi equation. We give explicit solutions which depend on an arbitrary holomorphic function. The simplest solutions are the basic Bloch and Néel skyrmions, but we also exhibit distorted skyrmions and anti-skyrmions as well as line defects and configurations consisting of skyrmions and anti-skyrmions.