SOLITONS INSTANTONS IN D-DIMENSIONAL SO(D) GAUGED O(D+1) SKYRME MODELS/

SO(d) gauged O(d + 1) Skyrme models, in three and four dimensions resp ectively, are studied numerically. The soliton/instanton solutions in these models are stabilized by the degree of the maps rather than the Chern-Pontryagin indices, but some of these solutions carry the latter index too. These models feature asymptotic properties that are differ ent from those of the corresponding Higgs models, mainly in that they exhibit catastrophic behaviour for some ranges of the coupling constan ts in the models.