Vibrational Quantisation of Skyrmions

The Skyrme model can be used to describe atomic nuclei as topological solitons known as Skyrmions. Since atomic nuclei are intrinsically quantum objects, we must give a quantisation scheme for our Skyrmions in order to fully realise this description. Until very recently, almost all such calculations used an approach known as rigid body quantisation, which produces some plausible results for small nuclei but has many problems. In this thesis we consider a more involved quantisation scheme where we include some vibrational modes which allow the Skyrmions to deform. We demonstrate that this idea resolves some of the problems of the rigid body method.