The decay of Hopf solitons in the Skyrme model

It is understood that the Skyrme model has a topologically interesting baryonic excitation which can model nuclei. So far no stable knotted solutions, of the Skyrme model, have been found. Here we investigate the dynamics of Hopf solitons decaying to the vacuum solution in the Skyrme model. In doing this we develop a matrix-free numerical method to identify the minimum eigenvalue of the Hessian of the corresponding energy functional. We also show that as the Hopf solitons decay, they emit a cloud of isospinning radiation.Comment: 10 pages, 12 image

Massive Hopfions

The Skyrme-Faddeev model is a (3+1)-dimensional model which has knotted, string-like, soliton solutions. In this paper we investigate a Skyrme-Faddeev model with an SO(3) symmetry breaking potential. We then rescale this model and take the mass to infinity. This infinite mass model is found to have compact knotted solutions. In all of the investigated massive models we find similar charged solutions as in the usual, m=0, model. We also find that their energies follow a similar power growth as the m=0 model.Comment: 18 page