Near-BPS baby Skyrmions

We consider the baby-Skyrme model in the regime close to the so-called restricted baby-Skyrme model, which is a BPS model with area-preserving diffeomorphism invariance. The perturbation takes the form of the standard kinetic Dirichlet term with a small coefficient ϵ. Classical solutions of this model, to leading order in ϵ, are called restricted harmonic maps. In the BPS limit (ϵ → 0) of the model with the potential being the standard pion-mass term, the solution with unit topological charge is a compacton. Using analytical and numerical arguments we obtain solutions to the problem for topological sectors greater than one. We develop a perturbative scheme in ϵ with which we can calculate the corrections to the BPS mass. The leading order (O(ϵ 1)) corrections show that the baby Skyrmion with topological charge two is energetically preferred. The binding energy requires us to go to the third order in ϵ to capture the relevant terms in perturbation theory, however, the binding energy contributes to the total energy at order ϵ2. We find that the baby Skyrmions — in the near-BPS regime — are compactons of topological charge two, that touch each other on their periphery at a single point and with orientations in the attractive channel.