HEAVY-QUARK SYMMETRY AND THE SKYRME MODEL

We present a consistent way of describing heavy baryons containing a h eavy quark as bound states of an SU(2) soliton and heavy mesons. The r esulting mass formula reveals the heavy quark symmetry explicitly. By extending the model to the orbitally excited states, we establish the generic structure bf the heavy baryon spectrum. As anticipated from th e heavy quark spin symmetry, the c factor denoting the hyperfine split ting constant vanishes and the baryons with the same angular momentum of light degrees of freedom form degenerate doublets. This approach is also applied to the pentaquark exotic baryons, where the conventional c factor no longer plays the role of the hyperfine constant. After di agonalizing the Hamiltonian of order N-c(-1), we get the degenerate do ublets, which implies the vanishing of genuine hyperfine splitting.