Strange Skyrmions: status and observable predictions

Abstract

The chiral soliton approach (CSA) provides predictions of the rich spectrum of baryonic states with different values of strangeness for any baryon number B. In the sector with B=1 the well known octet and decuplet of baryons are described within CSA, and some exotic states are predicted. In the B=2 sector there are many predictions, but only few of them - e.g. the existence of the virtual $\Lambda$N-state - have been confirmed till now. Possible reasons for this are discussed. In particular, the B=2 SO(3) hedgehog interpreted usually as H-particle within CSA has dimensions considerably smaller than dimensions of the deuteron. Therefore, the estimates of its production cross section made previously in the assumption that H-particle and deuteron are approximately of the same size, may be too optimistic. Other branches of the CSA predictions corresponding to other local minima of the B=2 configurations of the SU(3) chiral fields: SU(2) torus and skyrmion molecule with strangeness content close to 0.5 are also considered.