Topological energy bounds in generalized Skyrme models

The Skyrme model has a natural generalization amenable to a standard Hamiltonian treatment, consisting of the standard sigma model and the Skyrme terms, a potential, and a certain term sextic in first derivatives. Here we demonstrate that, in this theory, each pair of terms in the static energy functional which may support topological solitons according to the Derrick criterion (i.e., each pair of terms with opposite Derrick scaling) separately possesses a topological energy bound. As a consequence, there exists a four-parameter family of topological bounds for the full generalized Skyrme model. The optimal bounds, i.e., the optimal values of the parameters, depend both on the form of the potential and on the relative strength of the different terms. It also follows that various submodels of the generalized Skyrme model have one-parameter families of topological energy bounds. We also consider the case of topological bounds for the generalized Skyrme model on a compact base space as well as generalizations to higher dimensions.