Stable skyrmions in spinor condensates

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 Rb-87.