What exactly is a Skyrmion?

Abstract

Skyrmions are well known to be baryons because their topological charge has been positively identified with the baryon number. Beyond that their identity has never been clear. In view of the possibility of skyrmion production through Disoriented Chiral Condensates in heavy ion collisions, the exact identity of the skyrmion must be resolved before they can be identified in experiments. It is shown that skyrmions are not individual baryons but coherent states of known baryons and higher resonances on a compact manifold associated with the spin and flavor symmetry group. An outline of how to calculate exactly the probability amplitudes of the superposition of physical baryon and excited baryon states that make up the skyrmion is given.