SKYRMIONS - A THEORY OF NUCLEI

Skyrmions - A Theory of Nuclei surveys 60 years of research into the brilliant and imaginative idea of Tony Skyrme that atomic nuclei can be modelled as Skyrmions, topologically stable states in an effective quantum field theory of pions. Skyrme theory emerges as a low-energy approximation to the more fundamental theory of quarks and gluons - quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Skyrmions give spatial structure to the protons and neutrons inside nuclei, and capture the interactions of these basic ...