Stabilization of the Skyrmion

We examine the effects of treating the linear scale of the Skyrmion as a quantum variable. It is found that when angular momentum also is included, the soliton is stable and there is no need for the artificial quartic term traditionally used. These results involve a careful treatment of the constrained degrees of freedom and the quantization procedure and differ from those of earlier work using a less fundamental approach. Acceptable values are found for the masses and other static properties of the nucleon, Δ(1232), and Roper resonance. © 1996 The American Physical Society.