The nucleon-nucleon spin-orbit interaction in a modified Skyrme model

The Skyrme model predicts the isospin independent part of the nucleon-nucleon spin-orbit interaction to be repulsive, in conflict with nucleon-nucleon scattering phenomenology. It is shown here that Kalbermann's modified version of the Skyrme model leads to attractive long range behaviour of the spin-orbit interactions in both isospin channels, although at the expense of giving up the chiral symmetry of the model, and thus its link to large-N-c QCD.