Light Nuclei as Quantized Skyrmions: Energy Spectra and Form Factors

We review the SU(2) Skyrme model and describe its topological soliton solutions, which are called Skyrmions. Skyrmions provide a model of nuclei in which the conserved topological charge is identified with the baryon number of a nucleus. The semiclassical quantum theory of Skyrmions, in which they are treated as rigid bodies spinning in space and isospace, is described. We derive the energy spectra corresponding to various light nuclei, and predict a few new states. We also calculate the electromagnetic form factors describing the structure of the alpha-particle and lithium-6. Our recent reparametrization of the model gives results that are in reasonable quantitative agreement with experiment.