ON AN APPROXIMATION FOR CASIMIR ENERGIES, WITH APPLICATION TO THE SELF-CONSISTENT SOLITON OF THE EFFECTIVE CHIRAL ACTION

An approximate form for strongly non-local effective actions is studied in the particular case of the effective chiral action. A self-consistent static soliton is obtained, with observables differing (for physically relevant quark masses) by about 20% from those obtained from the exact static action, in cases where direct comparison is possible. Agreement worsens somewhat at larger quark masses. An analytically much simpler form of the approximation is also described, and found to give essentially indistinguishable results. It is suggested that this latter version, in particular, may provide a viable and tractable approach to such problems.