Pion crystals hosting topologically stable baryons

TL;DR

This paper constructs analytic inhomogeneous pion configurations with topological stability, modeling baryons as topological charges in chiral perturbation theory, and explores their electromagnetic properties and superflows.

Contribution

It introduces new analytic solutions for topologically non-trivial pion systems, including electromagnetic interactions, advancing understanding of baryons in chiral perturbation theory.

Findings

Topologically stable pion configurations with non-zero baryon charge

Existence of a topologically protected superflow in the system

Electromagnetic interactions induce supercurrents in these configurations

Abstract

We construct analytic (3+1)-dimensional inhomogeneous and topologically non-trivial pion systems using chiral perturbation theory. We discuss the effect of isospin asymmetry with vanishing electromagnetic interactions as well as some particular configurations with non-vanishing electromagnetic interactions. The inhomogeneous configurations of the pion fields are characterized by a non-vanishing topological charge that can be identified with baryons surrounded by a cloud of pions. This system supports a topologically protected persistent superflow. When the electromagnetic field is turned on the superflow corresponds to an electromagnetic supercurrent.