An introduction to skyrmions in nuclear physics

After a very brief discussion of the origins of the Skyrme model for hadronic physics, the authors treat the form of the effective lagrangian proposed by Skyrme, the nature of the equations of motion derived from it in the hedgehog model, projection techniques for the construction of states referring to nucleons or delta baryons, and the physical properties of these particles as derived from the model. The authors then explore extensions of the model that include other possible terms in the lagrangian. The scene is then prepared for applications of the method to nuclear situations. They begin with a derivation of the nucleon-nucleon potential from the skyrmion model using an extension of the approach of Heitler and London. Unfortunately, this method does not yield the well-known attraction in the central part of the NN potential, and they therefore consider extensions of the model lagrangain and of the generalized Heitler-London approximation scheme in an attempt to correct this situation