SCHRODINGER FIELDS ON THE PLANE WITH [U(1)](N) CHERN-SIMONS INTERACTIONS AND GENERALIZED SELF-DUAL SOLITONS

A general nonrelativistic field theory on the plane with couplings to an arbitrary number of Abelian Chern-Simons gauge fields is considered. Elementary excitations of the system are shown to exhibit fractional and mutual statistics. We identify the self-dual systems for which certain classical and quantal aspects of the theory can be studied in a much simplified mathematical setting. Then, specializing to the general self-dual system with two Chern-Simons gauge fields (and nonvanishing mutual statistics parameter), we present a systematic analysis for the static vortexlike classical solutions, with or without a uniform background magnetic field. Relativistic generalizations are also discussed briefly.