Nuclear binding energies from a BPS Skyrme model

Understand

Recently, within the space of generalized Skyrme models, a BPS submodel was identified which reproduces some bulk properties of nuclear matter already on a classical level and, as such, constitutes a promising field theory candidate for the detailed and reliable description of nuclei and hadrons.

• Here we extend and further develop these investigations by applying the model to the calculation of nuclear binding energies.
• Concretely, we calculate these binding energies by including the classical soliton energies, the excitation energies from the collective coordinate quantization of spin and isospin, the electrostatic Coulomb energies and a small explicit isospin symmetry breaking, which accounts for the mass difference between proton and neutron.
• The integrability properties of the BPS Skyrme model allow, in fact, for an analytical calculation of all contributions, which may then be compared with the semi-empirical mass formula.