Solitonic strings and knots

This paper describes a study of topological solitons in (3 + 1) dimensions, stabilized by the Hopf charge, which have the structure of closed strings. Through the use of rational maps between spheres we generate initial condi tions, which are then relaxed using a numerical simulation of the full nonl inear equations of motion. At this stage, solitons up to charge three are c onsidered, including a configuration which has the structure of a trefoil k not.