Stabilizing textures with magnetic fields
  The best-known way of stabilizing textures is by Skyrme-like terms, but another possibility is to use gauge fields. The semilocal vortex may be viewed as an example of this, in two spatial dimensions. In three dimensions, however, the idea (in its simplest form) does not work -- the link between the gauge field and the scalar field is not strong enough to prevent the texture from collapsing. Modifying the |D Phi|^2 term in the Lagrangian (essentially by changing the metric on the Phi-space) can strengthen this link, and lead to stability. Furthermore, there is a limit in which the gauge field is entirely determined in terms of the scalar field, and the system reduces to a pure Skyrme-like one. This is described for gauge group U(1), in dimensions two and three. The non-abelian version is discussed briefly, but as yet no examples of texture stabilization are known in this case. 
R S Ward