A false vacuum Skyrme model for nuclear matter

Abstract

The low energy regime of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) presents enormous challenges due to its large coupling. Effective field theories, like the Skyrme model, are useful approaches to study properties of strong interaction at hadronic scales. We propose a Skyrme-type model with a self-dual sector and that treats the density of the baryonic charge as a self-interacting fluid. The dynamics reduces to Coleman’s false vacuum problem for a scalar field that is a fractional power of that density. The main result is that such a Skyrme-type model is the first one to reproduce, with good accuracy, the experimental values of radii and binding energies for a very wide range of the mass number. The robust and simple properties of the model lead to many possible generalizations with implications not only in nuclear physics but also in other areas of Physics.

Solitons in the gauged Skyrme-Maxwell model

“…Substituting the axial Anzatz ( 28), ( 29) into the Hamiltonian of the Skyrme-Maxwell model (25) and into the Lagrangian (9), we obtain…”

“…The most radical version of the BPS Skyrme theory is constructed via truncation of the model, it contains only a sixth-order derivative term, which is the topological current density squared, and a potential [21,22]. It has been also suggested to consider a modification of the Skyrme model which supports self-duality equations [23][24][25]. Another direction is related with extensions of the Skyrme model via inclusion of higher-order derivative terms [21,22,[39][40][41][42][43], with various modifications of the potential and couplings.…”

A baby-Skyrme model with the anisotropic DM interaction: the compact skyrmions revisited

“…The Skyrme model, a (3+1)-dimensional nonlinear field theory of pions, is a model of hadrons and is supposed to be the most promising and long-lived effective model in the low-energy domain of quantumchromodynamics (QCD). The skyrmions, the topological solitons in the Skyrme model, well describe not only the standard hadrons and nuclei, but also structures of the dense nuclear matter [1][2][3][4] and the neutron star [5,6].…”

Multi-skyrmion states in the Skyrme model with a false vacuum potential*

“…In principle, terms such as also explicitly break chiral symmetry. It is found that this term introduces a false vacuum to the Skyrme model [25][26][27][28] in addition to the vacuum of QCD. Therefore, it is interesting to study the skyrmion properties with respect to this false vacuum, which is not only relevant to hadron physics but may also help us un-derstand the cosmological phase transition process [29][30][31].…”

“…When this false vacuum is added, the Skyrme model admits a false meta-stable skyrmion configuration [32], which can decay due to the tunneling effect [33], consequently causing the decay of the false vacuum [25]. In addition, with the appropriate choice of the false vacuum potential, the experimental values of radii and binding energies for a wide range of nuclear mass numbers can be calculated with good precision [26][27][28].…”