Anomalous electromagnetism of pions and magnons

Pions and magnons - the Goldstone bosons of the strong interactions and of magnetism - share a number of common features. Pion and magnon fields couple anomalously to electromagnetism through the conserved Goldstone-Wilczek current of their topological Skyrmion excitations. In the pion case, this coupling gives rise to the decay of the neutral pion into two photons. In the magnon case, the anomalous coupling leads to photonmagnon conversion in an external magnetic field. A measurement of the conversion rate in quantum Hall ferromagnets determines the anyon statistics angle of baby-Skyrmions. If photon-magnon conversion also occurs in antiferromagnets, baby-Skyrmions carry electric charge and may represent the Cooper-pairs of high-temperature superconductors.