Skyrmions and nuclei

In this talk, I will first give a brief introduction to the Skyrme model which is a model of nuclei. I will present two different ways of constructing the topological soliton solutions of the model called Skyrmions. To model nuclei using Skyrmions, one needs to quantise the classical Skyrmions. The method of semi-classical quantisation will be reviewed. The excitation states of Carbon-12 computed using the Skyrme model will be presented as an example of the application of the Skyrme model. The electromagnetic transition rate of various nuclei computed using the Skyrme model will also be discussed.