The effect of pion mass on Skyrme configurations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-zero pion mass influences Skyrme model configurations, revealing less spherical and more complex shapes compared to the massless case, with implications for modeling atomic nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces a computational approach to determine Skyrme configurations with non-zero pion mass and analyzes their geometric differences from the zero-mass case.

Findings

Configurations become less spherical with increasing pion mass.

Rational map approximation becomes less accurate for non-zero pion mass.

Minimum energy configurations show more complex shapes.

Abstract

In the Skyrme model, atomic nuclei are identified with solitonic configurations. If the pion mass is set to zero, these configurations are spherical shells of energy with a fullerene-like appearance and are well approximated by a simple rational map ansatz. Using simulated annealing, we have calculated minimum energy configurations for non-zero pion mass and have found that they are less round and are less well approximated by the rational map ansatz.