Skyrmed monopoles

We investigate multi-monopole solutions of a modified version of the BPS Yang–Mills–Higgs model in which a term quartic in the covariant derivatives of the Higgs field (a Skyrme term) is included in the Lagrangian. Using numerical methods we find that this modification leads to multi-monopole bound states. We compute axially symmetric monopoles up to charge five and also monopoles with Platonic symmetry for charges three, four and five. The numerical evidence suggests that, in contrast to Skyrmions, the minimal energy Skyrmed monopoles are axially symmetric.