Exploring the generalized loosely bound Skyrme model

TL;DR

This paper extends the Skyrme model with additional terms to better replicate Helium-4's properties, achieving very low classical and quantum binding energies while maintaining symmetry.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized loosely bound Skyrme model with a sextic term and potential, successfully reducing binding energies while preserving symmetries.

Findings

Classical binding energy for Helium-4 as low as 0.2%.

Quantum-corrected total binding energy as low as 3.6%.

Maintains cubic symmetry of the 4-Skyrmion.

Abstract

The Skyrme model is extended with a sextic derivative term - called the BPS-Skyrme term - and a repulsive potential term - called the loosely bound potential. A large part of the model's parameter space is studied for the 4-Skyrmion which corresponds to the Helium-4 nucleus and emphasis is put on preserving as much of the platonic symmetries as possible whilst reducing the binding energies. We reach classical binding energies for Helium-4 as low as 0.2%, while retaining the cubic symmetry of the 4-Skyrmion, and after taking into account the quantum mass correction to the nucleon due to spin/isospin quantization, we get total binding energies as low as 3.6% - still with the cubic symmetry intact.