Modifying the pion mass in the loosely bound Skyrme model

Abstract We study the loosely bound Skyrme model with the addition of two different pion mass terms; this is the most general potential of polynomial form up to second order in the trace of the Skyrme field. The two pion mass terms are called the standard pion mass term and the modified pion mass term. We find that the binding energies are not reduced by the introduction of the modified pion mass, but slightly larger values of the coefficient of the loosely bound potential are allowed when the modified pion mass term is used compared to the standard pion mass term. We find by increasing the overall pion mass that we can reduce the classical binding energy of the 4-Skyrmion to the 2.7% level and the total binding energy including the contribution from spin/isospin quantization is reduced to the 5.8% level.