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A gauged baby Skyrme model and a novel BPS bound

The baby Skyrme model is a well-known nonlinear field theory supporting topological solitons in two space dimensions. Its action functional consists of a potential term, a kinetic term quadratic in derivatives (the "nonlinear sigma model term") and the Skyrme term quartic in first derivatives. The limiting case of vanishing sigma model term (the so-called BPS baby Skyrme model) is known to support exact soliton solutions saturating a BPS bound which exists for this model. Further, the BPS model has infinitely many symmetries and conservation laws. Recently it was found that the gauged version of the BPS baby Skyrme model with gauge group U(1) and the usual Maxwell term, too, has a BPS bound and BPS solutions saturating this bound. This BPS bound is determined by a superpotential which has to obey a superpotential equation, in close analogy to the situation in supergravity. Further, the BPS bound and the corresponding BPS solitons only may exist for potentials such that the superpotential equation has a global solution. We also briefly describe some properties of soliton solutions.