Absence of attraction in the NN central potential derived from skyrmions

The nucleon-nucleon potential is studied using a skyrmion lagrangian containing terms of second, fourth, and sixth order in the field derivatives; the fourth-order pieces contain both an antisymmetric (repulsive) form and a symmetric (attractive) one. No attraction is found in the central NN potential V_C when the full structure of the sixth-order term is retained. As yet another candidate for the source of attraction in V_C, admixtures of ΔΔ components in the two-baryon wave function are considered. These slightly lower the values of V_C for 1 ≤ R ≤ 2 fm, but by no means sufficiently to bring about a net attraction there. Thus the challenge of finding sources of attraction in the skyrmion approach remains.