Chiral solitons and QCD anomalies

Chiral solitons are usually obtained in the nonlinear sigma model, which corresponds to the (1/2, 1/2) representation of SU(2) x SU(2). Here we consider an alternative form for the pion field belonging to the (1,1) representation. The study of the Wess-Zumino term shows that only the sigma model yields a normalization for the baryonic current supported by quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In order to study the influence of QCD on soliton properties we consider solutions of the alternative chiral Lagrangian and show that the form of the pion field has little influence over numerical predictions. (author)