Existence and strong-field asymptotics of skyrmions in a fourth-order model of frustrated ferromagnets

Abstract: We study a fourth-order variational model for two-dimensional frustrated ferromagnets with competing exchange interactions and an applied magnetic field of strength $H&gt;0$. For every $H&gt;1/4$, we prove that the energy admits minimizers in the topological classes $Q=\pm1$ and that every minimizing sequence is precompact in $H<sup>2$ modulo translations. The main difficulty is that spectral coercivity degenerates as $H\downarrow1/4$. Using a Helmholtz circle-mean identity, we prove that the residual energy of every nonzero-degree configuration has a uniform positive lower bound, even at the degenerate endpoint. Together with a sphere-valued $H<sup>2$-splitting construction, this provides a threshold-stable binding inequality and yields compactness throughout the coercive regime. We also identify $H=1/4$ as the sharp spectral threshold. Below it the energy is unbounded from below, whereas at the threshold nonzero-degree configurations retain a positive energy barrier and degree-zero Weyl sequences lose compactness. Finally, in the strong-field regime, rescaled minimizers approach those minimizers of the limiting functional that maximize the Dirichlet energy, while topological-charge and normalized-energy measures concentrate on the $H<sup>{-1/4}$-scale.