STABILITY AND REPRESENTATION DEPENDENCE OF THE QUANTUM SKYRMION

A constructive realization of Skyrme's conjecture that an effective pi on mass ''may arise as a self-consistent quantal effect'' based on an ab initio quantum treatment of the Skyrme model is presented. In this quantum-mechanical Skyrme model the spectrum of states with I=J, which appears in the collective quantization, terminates without any infini te tower of unphysical states. The termination point depends on the mo del parameters and the dimension of the SU(2) representation. Represen tations, in which the nucleon and Delta(33) resonance are the only sta ble states, exist. The model is developed for both irreducible and red ucible representations of general dimension. States with spin larger t han 1/2 are shown to be deformed. The representation dependence of the baryon observables is illustrated numerically. [S0556-2813(98)05505-8 ].