Solitons in the presence of a static spin vacancy on a 2D Heisenberg antiferromagnet

We study the behavior of the Belavin-Polyakov soliton with size R localized at the origin in the presence of a static spin vacancy at distance r(0) away in a two-dimensional isotropic antiferromagnet. It is found that an effective interaction between the two defects is attractive for small distances of separation (r(0) < R) and repulsive for large separations (r(0) > R). For the case in which the spin vacancy is located at the soliton center (r(0) = 0), we found that, besides the Belavin-Polyakov soliton, another different type of soliton is possible and its configuration, energy and size were obtained analytically. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.