HEAVY-QUARK SOLITONS - STRANGENESS AND SYMMETRY-BREAKING

We discuss the generalization of the Callan-Klebanov model to the case of heavy quark baryons. The light flavor group is considered to be SU(3) and the limit of heavy spin symmetry is taken. The presence of the Wess-Zumino-Witten term permits the neat development of a picture, at the collective level, of a light diquark bound to a ''heavy'' quark with decoupled spin degree of freedom. The consequences of SU(3) symmetry breaking are discussed in detail. We point out that the SU(3) mass splittings of the heavy baryons essentially measure the ''low energy'' physics once more and that the comparison with experiment is satisfactory.