Properties of hedgehog solitons in a chiral quark model with nonlocal
regulators are described. We discuss the formation of the hedgehog soliton, the
quantization of the baryon number, the energetic stability, the gauging and
construction of Noether currents with help of path-ordered P-exponents, and the
evaluation of observables. The issue of nonlocality is thoroughly discussed,
with a focus on contributions to observables related to the Noether currents.
It is shown that with typical model parameters the solitons are not far from
the weak nonlocality limit. The methods developed are applicable to solitons in
models with separable nonlocal four-fermion interactions.Comment: 42 pages, 8 figures, a new section presenting the results with the
chiral-circle constrain