Electromagnetic currents in the Skyrme model

The Skyrme model and its generalizations, in which the baryons are topological solitons of mesons fields, allows one to predict all the key features of the nucleon-nucleon interaction in a qualitatively correct way. As the topological soliton approach may be viewed as an approximate boson representation of QCD that is applicable at low energies it provides a theoretically appealing starting point for nuclear physics that is almost as simple in application as the conventional meson exchange description. Here the nuclear electromagnetic current operators as they appear in the topological soliton approach will be discussed. Special emphasis will be given to the topological isoscalar current operator. 26 refs.; 10 figs