Topological charge asymmetry in a C P N skyrmion-fermion coupled system

Topology plays a central role in classifying solitonic configurations in field theories, providing robustness and a nonperturbative label, the so-called topological charge Q . In soliton-fermion coupled systems, the relation between the topological charge and the number of zero modes is well established through the index theorem. However, the physical consequences of the sign of the topological charge have remained largely unexplored. In this work, we study fermions in 2 + 1 dimensions coupled to skyrmions with target space C P N , particularly focusing on the backreactions of the fermions and on the sign of the topological charge. We obtain the solutions in a self-consistent manner, which exhibit an asymmetry with respect to the topological charge ± Q especially in the strong coupling regimes. This asymmetry is caused by the fermionic eigenvalue problem inherent in the self-consistent formulation. Although the Lagrangian is symmetric under Q → − Q , the coupled equations for the skyrmions and anti-skyrmions become inequivalent once fermionic backreaction is taken into account. We demonstrate the mechanism in C P 1 and C P 2 skyrmions, but the analysis is directly extendable for the general C P N .