rho Mesons and the Compressibility of Nuclear Matter in the Skyrme Model

In this paper, we briefly review some recent advances in a low-energy model of Quantum Chromodynamics, where nuclei and baryons are described by topological soliton solutions known as Skyrmions. Hence, following the great success of coupling the rho mesons to the Skyrme field (which provided more realistic nuclear binding energies for the model and the triggering of nuclear clustering), we consider the role that the leading \(ρ π π \) interaction term can play in the study of dense nuclear matter. This contribution, motivated by a theoretical construction from a Yang–Mills theory in one higher dimension, astonishingly reduces the compression modulus that the Skyrme model provides from the very large value of \(K_0 1080\) MeV to a more physical \(K_0 351\) MeV. Abstract Published by the Jagiellonian University 2026 authors