Skyrmions and/in the weak interactions

We consider the Skyrme model coupled to the weak interactions. Due to weak instantons, the ordinary skyrmion is unstable and decays into an anti-lepton and pions. We study the role of the Weinberg-Salam Higgs field in this process and also discuss the absence of vacuum tunneling. Next the Higgs field is regarded as the Goldstone boson field of an underlying chiral symmetry breaking theory, like technicolor, in which the Higgs field can be described by a Skyrme model. The skyrmions in the Higgs sector correspond to techni-baryons. These techni-skyrmions carry the fermion number of any fermion with a large mass generated by a Yukawa coupling. The decays of the ordinary and techni-skyrmions are examined in these cases. We show that these phenomena can be understood at the techni-quark level. (orig.)