We study smooth SU(2) solutions of the Hitchin equations on R^2, with the determinant of the complex Higgs field being a polynomial of degree n. When n>=3, there are moduli spaces of solutions, in the sense that the natural L^2 metric is well-defined
on a subset of the parameter space. We examine rotationally-symmetric solutions for n=1 and n=2, and then focus on the n=3 case, elucidating the moduli and describing the asymptotic geometry as well as the geometry of two totally-geodesic surfaces.
The moduli space of centred Bogomolny-Prasad-Sommmerfield 2-monopole fields is a 4-dimensional manifold M with a natural metric, and the geodesics on M correspond to slow-motion monopole dynamics. The best-known case is that of monopoles on R^3, wher
e M is the Atiyah-Hitchin space. More recently, the case of monopoles periodic in one direction (monopole chains) was studied a few years ago. Our aim in this note is to investigate M for doubly-periodic fields, which may be visualized as monopole walls. We identify some of the geodesics on M as fixed-point sets of discrete symmetries, and interpret these in terms of monopole scattering and bound orbits, concentrating on novel features that arise as a consequence of the periodicity.
