In a Two‐Dimensional Electron System, the Skyrmion's the Limit

Skyrmions—which can be thought of, loosely, as topological twists or kinks in a spin space—are one of those concepts that seem to jump restlessly from field to field. Technically, in a nonlinear field theory a Skyrmion is defined as a soliton with spin and statistics different from those of the underlying fields. Introduced by Tony H. R. Skyrme in 1958 as a way of representing the nucleon (a fermion) as a topological soliton of bosonic pion fields, skyrmions have sojourned in nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics.