title: Stable Skyrmions in spinor condensates.
abstract: Globally symmetric spinor condensates in free space are argued not to support stable topological defects in either two or three dimensions. In the latter case, however, we show that a topological Skyrmion can be stabilized by forcing it to adopt certain density profiles. A sufficient condition for the existence of Skyrmion solutions in three dimensions is formulated and illustrated in simple examples. Our results pertain to Bose-Einstein condensation in 87Rb.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6.
authors.forename: Igor F
authors.initials: IF
authors.lastname: Herbut
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Oshikawa