Villarceau foliated solitons in the two-dimensional \(\text O(3)\) nonlinear sigma model (Q856767)

The authors show the existence of solitons in the 2D \(\text O(3)\) nonlinear sigma model (NSM2) which admit a foliation by Villarceau circles. They apply a explicit geometric algorithm to find the required solutions. The method exploits the conformal invariance of the NSM2 functional, the principle of symmetric criticality, and the theory of clamped elasticae. Also, the topological charge of the NSM2 solitons is computed.