On the semiclassical quantization of the chiral soliton

The soliton of the effective chiral action of quantum chromodynamics is quantized in a semiclassical fashion using the 'cranking approach' developed for the description of rotating nuclei. It is shown that for the Skyrmion model this approach is equivalent to the semiclassical quantization proposed by Adkins et al. Contrasting the assumptions of the cranking approach to the experimental excitation spectrum of the nucleon leads to the conclusion that the semiclassical quantization is inapplicable to the chiral soliton if the latter is to describe the physical nucleon. (author)