Stable Skyrmions from Extra Dimensions

by Andrea Wulzer (EPFL)

Thursday 27 Mar 2008, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Theory Conference Room (CERN)

Compact five dimensional gauge theories are found to admit stable solitonic solutions which carry a conserved topological charge and correspond to the skyrmions of the associated 4D Goldstone Bosons sigma-model. The 5D skyrmion configurations are obtained numerically and their size and energy are computed. Contrary to the original skyrmions, such solutions have sizes larger than the inverse cut-off scale and therefore they are trustable within the effective field theory approach. In TeV scale extra-dimensional models such solitonic particles can have interesting phenomenological consequences as they carry a conserved charge analogous to baryon number. Also, as in the original Skyrme model, 5D skyrmions could be interpreted as the physical baryons in the context of extra-dimensional ``holographic'' models of low energy QCD. The latter aspect is briefly discussed.