Talk:Magnetic skyrmion

Stability Vs. Lability

It appears to me that the discussion on the stability of skyrmions could benefit from the concept of lability —- the speed with which an energetically unstable system relaxes.

For example: wood in the presence of oxygen (such as in the air) is unstable —- a lower energy condition exists, which can be reached by burning. Burning wood in air releases energy in the form of heat and light. However, at normal environmental temperatures, this reaction does not occur because the mixture is not labile, even though it is energetically unstable.

By the same token, a Uranium-238 nucleus is not stable with respect to alpha emission: the energy of the Uranium-238 nucleus is a bit more than 4 million electron volts greater than the energy of the released alpha particle and the resultant Thorium-234 nucleus. However, the reaction is very slow (it is not very labile), having a half-life of more than four billion years.

Unfirtunately, I do not understand skyrmions enough to introduce this concept and clarify the article. Perhaps someone else will? 128.84.183.219 (talk) 19:55, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

I've read [9] (Heinze et al. paper), but I still dont understand the skyrmion number meaning. Is somebody able to explain how it works, and how that integral is able to act as a topological number? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.204.114.64 (talk) 08:54, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me that some authors have hijacked pieces of this to promote thier own work.