We construct and study two kink theories. One contains a static 2-kink configuration with controllable binding energy. The other contains a locally stable non-topological solution, which we call a lavion. The new models are 1D analogs of non-integrable systems in higher dimensions such as the Skyrme model and realistic vortex systems. To help construct the theories, we derive a simple expression for the interaction energy between two kinks.
In this Letter, we address the {long-range interaction} between kinks and antikinks, as well as kinks and kinks, in $φ^{2n+4}$ field theories for $n>1$. The kink-antikink interaction is generically attractive, while the kink-kink interaction is generically repulsive. We find that the force of interaction decays with the $(\frac{2n}{n-1})$th power of their separation, and we identify the general prefactor for {\it arbitrary} $n$. Importantly, we test the resulting mathematical prediction with detailed numerical simulations of the dynamic field equation, and obtain good agreement between theory …
The fractal velocity pattern in symmetric kink-antikink collisions in $ϕ^4$ theory is shown to emerge from a dynamical model with two effective moduli, the kink-antikink separation and the internal shape mode amplitude. The shape mode usefully approximates Lorentz contractions of the kink and antikink, and the previously problematic null-vector in the shape mode amplitude at zero separation is regularized.
In a scalar field theory with a symmetric octic potential having a quartic minimum and two quadratic minima, kink solutions have long-range tails. We calculate the force between two kinks and between a kink and an antikink when their long-range tails overlap. This is a nonlinear problem, solved using an adiabatic ansatz for the accelerating kinks that leads to a modified, first-order Bogomolny equation. We find that the kink-kink force is repulsive and decays with the fourth power of the kink separation. The kink-antikink force is attractive and decays similarly. Remarkably, the kink-kink repu…
We show that in some kink-antikink (KAK) collisions sphalerons, i.e., unstable static solutions - rather than the asymptotic free soliton states - can be the source of the internal degrees of freedom (normal modes) which trigger the resonance phenomenon responsible for the fractal structure in the final state formation.
The interaction between kink and radiation in nonlinear one-dimensional real scalar field is investigated. The process of discrete vibrational mode excitation in $ϕ^4$ model is considered. The role of this oscillations in creation of kink and antikink is discussed. Numerical results are presented as well as some attempts of analytical explanations. An intriguing fractal structure in parameter space dividing regions with creation and without is also presented.
Interaction of asymmetric $ϕ^6$ kinks with a spatially localized $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric perturbation is investigated numerically. It has been shown that when the kink (antikink) hits the defect from the gain side, a final velocity of the kink decreases (increases), while for the kink and antikink coming from the opposite direction their final velocities remain unchanged. It is also found that when the kink interacts with the defect from the gain side multiple pair of the kink-antikink are formed from small amplitude waves (phonons) in the final states depending on the initial velocity of the…
We show that constrained $CP^1$ instantons, combined with the Relativistic Moduli Space approach, can accurately describe kink-antikink collisions in the $ϕ^4$ model.
Five-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet gravity, with one warped extra-dimension, allows classes of solutions where two scalar fields combine either in a kink-antikink system or in a trapping bag configuration. While the kink-antikink system can be interpreted as a pair of gravitating domain walls with opposite topological charges, the trapping bag solution consists of a domain wall supplemented by a non-topological defect. In both classes of solutions, for large absolute values of the bulk coordinate (i.e. far from the core of the defects), the geometry is given by five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space…
We study kink-antikink collisions in a model which interpolates smoothly between the completely integrable sine-Gordon theory, the $ϕ^4$ model, and a $ϕ^6$-like model with three degenerate vacua. We find a rich variety of behaviours, including integrability breaking, resonance windows with increasingly irregular patterns, and new types of windows near the $ϕ^6$-like regime. False vacua, extra kink modes and kink fragmentation play important roles in the explanations of these phenomena. Our numerical studies are backed up by detailed analytical considerations.
We study kink-antikink collisions in the one-dimensional non-integrable scalar phi^6 model. Although the single-kink solutions for this model do not possess an internal vibrational mode, our simulations reveal a resonant scattering structure, thereby providing a counterexample to the standard belief that existence of such a mode is a necessary condition for multi-bounce resonances in general kink-antikink collisions. We investigate the two-bounce windows in detail, and present evidence that this structure is caused by existence of bound states in the spectrum of small oscillations about a comb…
We explore a class of $ϕ^{4n}$ models with kink and antikink solutions that have long-range tails on both sides, specializing to the cases with $n=2$ and $n=3$. A recently developed method of an accelerating kink ansatz is used to estimate the force between the kink and the antikink. We use state-of-the-art numerical methods to initialize the system in a kink-antikink configuration with a finite initial velocity and to evolve the system according to the equations of motion. Among these methods, we propose a computationally efficient way to initialize the velocity field of the system. Interesti…
We study kink-antikink collisions in a particular case of the double sine-Gordon model depending on only one parameter $r$. The scattering process of large kink-antikink shows the changing of the topological sector. For some parameter intervals we observed two connected effects: the production of up to five antikink-kink pairs and up to three solitary oscillations. The scattering process for small kink-antikink has several possibilities: the changing of the topological sector, one-bounce collision, two-bounce collision, or formation of a bion state. In particular, we observed for small values …
Kink-antikink scattering in the $ϕ^4$ model is investigated in the limit when the static inter-soliton force vanishes. We observe the formation of spectral walls and, further, identify a new phenomenon, the vacuum wall, whose existence gives rise to a bouncing structure for the annihilating solitons. Furthermore, we discover higher order spectral walls, i.e., spectral walls which form when higher harmonics enter the continuous spectrum. These higher order spectral walls not only deform the soliton trajectories, they also can be observed easily as very intense radiation bursts.
We investigate the role that quasinormal modes can play in kink-antikink collisions, via an example based on a perturbation of the $ϕ^4$ model. We find that narrow quasinormal modes can store energy during collision processes and return it back to the translational degrees of freedom. Quasinormal modes also decay, which leads to energy leakage, causing a closing of resonance windows and an increase of the critical velocity. We observe similar phenomena in an effective model, a small modification of the collective-coordinate approach to the $ϕ^4$ model.
In this work, kink-antikink collision in a two-dimensional Lorentz-violating $ϕ^4$ model is considered. It is shown that the Lorentz-violating term in the proposed model does not affect the structure of the linear perturbation spectrum of the standard $ϕ^4$ model, and thus there exists only one vibrational mode. The Lorentz-violating term impacts, however, the frequency and spatial wave function of the vibrational mode. As a consequence, the well-known results on $ϕ^4$ kink-antikink collision will also change. Collisions of kink-antikink pairs with different values of initial velocities and Lo…
This paper investigates a model containing $ϕ^4$ kinks interacting with fermions. The fermion back-reaction is included in the equations of motion, which affects the kink-antikink collisions. We show that the fermion field generates a force that can be either attractive or repulsive. Moreover, we investigate three different scenarios, which exhibit a wide variety of behaviors including the usual scenarios observed in the $ϕ^4$ model as well as the formation of two oscillons, reflection without contact, one-bounce resonance windows, and the creation of kink-antikink pairs. We also find evidence…
We show that thick spectral walls exist in antikink-kink collisions in the $ϕ^6$ model. In this model, they are triggered by the so-called $delocalized$ $modes$ which do not exist in the single-soliton sector but emerge in antikink-kink ($\bar{K}K$) collisions. Therefore, spectral walls are a rather common phenomenon that should occur in many solitonic collisions involving non-symmetric kinks as, e.g., in the $ϕ^8$ or higher power models.
We study excitations and collisions of kinks in a scalar field theory where the potential has two minima with $Z_2$ symmetry. The field potential is designed to create a square well potential in the stability equation of the kink excitations. The stability equation is analogous to the Schrödinger equation, and therefore we use quantum mechanics techniques to study the system. We modify the square well potential continuously, which allows the excitation to tunnel and consequently turns the normal modes of the kink into quasinormal modes. We study the effect of this transition, leading to energy…
We study kink-antikink scattering in the sine-Gordon model in the presence of interactions with an additional scalar field, $ψ$, that is in its quantum vacuum. In contrast to the classical scattering, now there is quantum radiation of $ψ$ quanta and the kink-antikink may form bound states that resemble breathers of the sine-Gordon model. We quantify the rate of radiation and map the parameters for which bound states are formed. Even these bound states radiate and decay, and eventually there is a transition into long-lived oscillons.
We consider the interaction of solitons in a biharmonic, beam model analogue of the well-studied $ϕ^4$ Klein-Gordon theory. Specifically, we calculate the force between a well separated kink and antikink. Knowing their accelerations as a function of separation, we can determine their motion using a simple ODE. There is good agreement between this asymptotic analysis and numerical computation. Importantly, we find the force has an exponentially-decaying oscillatory behaviour (unlike the monotonically attractive interaction in the Klein-Gordon case). Corresponding to the zeros of the force, we p…
In this paper kink scattering processes are investigated in the Montonen-Sarker-Trullinger-Bishop model. The MSTB model is in fact a one-parametric family of relativistic scalar field theories living in a one-time one-space Minkowski space-time which encompasses two coupled scalar fields. Between the static solutions of the model two kinds of topological kinks are distinguished in a precise range of the family parameter. In that regime there exists one unstable kink exhibiting only one non-null component of the scalar field. Another type of topological kink solutions, stable in this case, incl…
We studied the kink-antikink collision process for the "double sine-Gordon" (DSG) equation in 1+1 dimensions at different values of the potential parameter $R>0$. For small values of $R$ we discuss the problem of resonance frequencies. We give qualitative explanation of the frequency shift in comparison with the frequency of the discrete level in the potential well of isolated kink. We show that in this region of the parameter $R$ the effective long-range interaction between kink and antikink takes place.
In this work we consider kink-antikink and antikink-kink collisions in a modified $ϕ^4$ model with a false vacuum characterized by a dimensionless parameter $ε$. The usual $ϕ^4$ model is recovered for $ε=0$. We investigate the $ε<<1$ regime where the kink in the presence of false vacuum can be understood as a small deformation of the standard kink for the $ϕ^4$ model. We show that the attractive interaction between the kink-antikink pair leads to a rich scattering pattern, in some cases delaying considerably the false vacuum decay.
In this work we consider kink-antikink collisions for some classes of $(1,1)$-dimensional nonlinear models. We are particularly interested to investigate in which aspect the presence of a general kinetic content in the Lagrangian could be revealed in a collision process. We consider a particular class of models known as twin theories, where different models lead to same solutions for the equations of motion and same energy density profile. The theories can be distinguished in the level of linear stability of defect structure. We study a class of k-defect theories depending on a parameter $M$ w…
In this paper, we have studied the kink and antikink solutions in several neutral scalar models in 1+1 dimension. We follow the standard approach to write down the leading order and the second order force between long distance separated kink and antikink. The leading order force is proportional to exponential decay with respect to the distance between the two nearest kinks or antikinks. The second order force have a similar behavior with the larger decay factor, namely $3\over 2$. We make use of these properties to construct the kink lattice. The dynamics of the kink lattice with leading order…
We study the kink-antikink scattering within the double sine-Gordon model. In the numerical simulations we found a critical value $v_{cr}$ of the initial velocity $v_{in}$, which separates two different scenarios: at $v_{in}<v_{cr}$ the kinks capture each other and form a bound state, while at $v_{in}>v_{cr}$ the kinks pass through each other and escape to infinities. We obtain non-monotonous dependence of $v_{cr}$ on the model parameter $R$. Besides that, at some initial velocities below $v_{cr}$ we observe formation and interaction of the so-called oscillons (new phenomenon), as well as esca…
In this paper we examine the scattering processes among the members of a rich family of kinks which arise in a (1+1)-dimensional relativistic two scalar field theory. These kinks carry two different topological charges that determine the mutual interactions between the basic energy lumps (extended particles) described by these topological defects. Processes like topological charge exchange, kink-antikink bound state formation or kink repulsion emerge depending on the charges of the scattered particles. Two-bounce resonant windows have been found in the antikink-kink scattering processes, but n…
We consider a class of topological defects in $(1,1)$-dimensions with a deformed $ϕ^4$ kink structure whose stability analysis leads to a Schrödinger-like equation with a zero-mode and at least one vibrational (shape) mode. We are interested in the dynamics of kink-antikink collisions, focusing on the structure of two-bounce windows. For small deformation and for one or two vibrational modes, the observed two-bounce windows are explained by the standard mechanism of a resonant effect between the first vibrational and the translational modes. With the increasing of the deformation, the effect o…
In this work, we study kink collisions in a scalar field model with scalar-kinetic coupling. This model supports kink/antikink solutions with inner structure in the energy density. The collision of two such kinks is simulated by using the Fourier spectral method. We numerically calculate how the critical velocity and the widths of the first three two bounce windows vary with the model parameters. After that, we report some interesting collision results including two-bion escape final states, kink-bion-antikink intermediate states and kink or antikink intertwined final states. These results sho…
We propose a new method of studying a real-time canonical evolution of field-theoretic systems with boundary coupling to a realistic heat bath. In the free-field case the method is equivalent to an infinite extension of the system beyond the boundary, while in the interacting case the extension of the system is done in linear approximation. We use this technique to study kink-antikink dynamics in $φ^4$ field theory in 1+1 dimensions.
In this work we consider model of asymmetric kinks, where the behavior of the solution in one side is different from the other side. Also, the models depend of an integer $n$ and, with the increase of $n$, the constructed kink assumes a hybrid character: a compactlike profile on one side and a kinklike profile on the other side. We investigate numerically the kink-antikink and antikink-kink dynamics, with the aim to understand the effect of the transition of the usual kink to the semi-compacton structure. The kink-antikink process shows the formation of one-bounce windows for small values of $…
For kink-antikink scattering within the ϕ^4 non--linear field theory in one space and one time dimension resonance type configurations emerge when the relative velocity between kink and antikink falls below a critical value. It has been conjectured that the vibrational excitation of the kink would be the source for these resonances because (simplified) collective coordinate calculations, that emphasized on this excitation, qualitatively reproduced those resonances. Surprisingly a numerical study in the ϕ^6 field theory also exhibited such resonances even though it does not contain the vibratio…
We investigate the strong coupling region of the topological sector of the two-dimensional $ϕ^4$ theory. Using discrete light cone quantization (DLCQ), we extract the masses of the lowest few excitations and observe level crossings. To understand this phenomena, we evaluate the expectation value of the integral of the normal ordered $ϕ^2$ operator and we extract the number density of constituents in these states. A coherent state variational calculation confirms that the number density for low-lying states above the transition coupling is dominantly that of a kink-antikink-kink state. The Four…
Recently it was shown that kink baryons and kink-antikink scattering in the massless Gross-Neveu model are closely related to one- and two-soliton solutions of the sinh-Gordon equation. Here we generalize these findings to the case of n kinks and antikinks. Using the known n soliton solution of the sinh-Gordon equation, we solve the general n kink-antikink scattering problem in the large N Gross-Neveu model analytically, mapping the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approach onto inverse scattering theory.
We compute the vacuum polarization energies (VPE) of solitons in a self-dual impurity model in which the soliton profiles take the shape of a separated kink-antikink pair. Classically the soliton energies are invariant under the change of a continuous parameter that can be interpreted as the kink-antikink separation. This is not the case for the VPE so that quantum effects decide on the energetically most favorable separation. The considered configurations are classically stable so that its quantum fluctuations have only real frequency eigenvalues. Hence, in contrast to the kink-antikink confi…
Some time ago, Thies et al. showed that the Gross-Neveu model with a bare mass term possesses a kink-antikink crystalline phase. Corresponding self-consistent solutions, known earlier in polymer physics, are described by a self-isospectral pair of one-gap periodic Lame potentials with a Darboux displacement depending on the bare mass. We study an unusual supersymmetry of such a second order Lame system, and show that the associated first order Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonian possesses the own nonlinear supersymmetry. The Witten index is ascertained to be zero for both of the related exotic su…
We study interactions of kinks and antikinks of the $(1+1)$-dimensional $φ^8$ model. In this model, there are kinks with mixed tail asymptotics: power-law behavior at one infinity versus exponential decay towards the other. We show that if a kink and an antikink face each other in way such that their power-law tails determine the kink--antikink interaction, then the force of their interaction decays slowly, as some negative power of distance between them. We estimate the force numerically using the collective coordinate approximation, and analytically via Manton's method (making use of formula…
A first order equation for a static $ϕ^4$ kink in the presence of an impurity is extended into an iterative scheme. At the first iteration, the solution is the standard kink, but at the second iteration the kink impurity generates a kink-antikink solution or a bump solution, depending on a constant of integration. The third iterate can be a kink-antikink-kink solution or a single kink modified by a variant of the kink's shape mode. All equations are first order ODEs, so the nth iterate has n moduli, and it is proposed that the moduli space could be used to model the dynamics of n kinks and ant…
In this paper the scattering between the non-topological kinks arising in a family of two-component scalar field theory models is analyzed. A winding charge is carried by these defects. As a consequence, two different classes of kink scattering processes emerge: (1) collisions between kinks that carry the same winding number and (2) scattering events between kinks with opposite winding number. The variety of scattering channels is very rich and it strongly depends on the collision velocity and the model parameter. For the first type of events, four distinct scattering channels are found: \text…
We construct a fermion system in a multi-kink-antikink soliton background, and present in an explicit form all its trapped configurations (bound state solutions) as well as scattering states. This is achieved by exploiting an exotic N=4 centrally extended nonlinear supersymmetry of completely isospectral pairs of reflectionless Schrodinger systems with potentials to be n-soliton solutions for the Korteweg-de Vries equation. The obtained reflectionless Dirac system with a position-dependent mass is shown to possess its own exotic nonlinear supersymmetry associated with the matrix Lax-Novikov op…
We study final states in the scattering of kinks and antikinks of the $φ^8$ field-theoretic model. We use the initial conditions in the form of two, three or four static or moving kinks. In the numerical experiments we observe a number of different processes such as emergence of static and moving oscillons, change of the kink's topological sector, scattering of an oscillon by a kink, production of kink-antikink pairs in oscillon-oscillon collisions. In antikink-kink collisions for asymmetric kinks, we found resonance phenomena -- escape windows.
We study tachyon kinks with and without electromagnetic fields in the context of boundary string field theory. For the case of pure tachyon only an array of kink-antikink is obtained. In the presence of electromagnetic coupling, all possible static codimension-one soliton solutions such as array of kink-antikink, single topological BPS kink, bounce, half kink, as well as nonBPS topological kink are found, and their properties including the interpretation as branes are analyzed in detail. Spectrum of the obtained kinks coincides with that of Dirac-Born-Infeld type effective theory.
Effective-potential classification of kink-antikink collision channels in the $ϕ^8$ scalar field theory
SDU-ANU Joint Science College, Shandong University（山东大学-澳国立大学联合学院）；Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy and Solar-Terrestrial Environment, Institute of Space Sciences, Shandong University（山东大学空间科学学院）
In this work we study kink-antikink and antikink-kink collisions in hyperbolic models of fourth and sixth order. We compared the patterns of scattering with known results from polynomial models of the same order. The hyperbolic models considered here tend to the polynomial $ϕ^4$ and $ϕ^6$ models in the limit of small values of the scalar field. We show that kinks and antikinks that interact hyperbolically with fourth order differ sensibly from those governed by the polynomial $ϕ^4$ model. The increasing of the order of interaction to the sixth order shows that the hyperbolic and polynomial mod…
There are $N-1$ classes of kink solutions in $SU(N)\times Z_2$. We show how interactions between various kinks depend on the classes of individual kinks as well as on their orientations with respect to each other in the internal space. In particular, we find that the attractive or repulsive nature of the interaction depends on the trace of the product of charges of the two kinks. We calculate the interaction potential for all combinations of kinks and antikinks in $SU(5)\times Z_2$ and study their collisions. The outcome of kink-antikink collisions, as expected from previous studies, is sensit…
Moduli spaces - finite-dimensional, collective coordinate manifolds - for kinks and antikinks in $ϕ^4$ theory and sine-Gordon theory are reconsidered. The field theory Lagrangian restricted to moduli space defines a reduced Lagrangian, combining a potential with a kinetic term that can be interpreted as a Riemannian metric on moduli space. Moduli spaces should be metrically complete, or have an infinite potential on their boundary. Examples are constructed for both kink-antikink and kink-antikink-kink configurations. The naive position coordinates of the kinks and antikinks sometimes need to b…
The symmetric dynamics of two kinks and one antikink in classical (1+1)-dimensional $ϕ^4$ theory is investigated. Gradient flow is used to construct a collective coordinate model of the system. The relationship between the discrete vibrational mode of a single kink, and the process of kink-antikink pair production is explored.
We demonstrate numerically that an oscillation mode in 1+1 dimensions (eg a breather or an oscillon) can decay into a kink-antikink pair by a sudden distortion of the evolution potential which occurs within a certain time or space domain. In particular, we consider the transition of a sine-Gordon potential into a Φ^4 potential. The breather field configuration is assumed to initially evolve in a sine-Gordon potential with velocity $v$ and oscillation frequency $ω$. We then consider two types of numerical experiments: a. An abrupt transition of the potential to a $Φ^4$ form at t_0=0 over the wh…
We investigate generalizations of the $ϕ^4$ and sine-Gordon models, including interactions with Dirac Fermions. We observe new resonance phenomena by taking the fermion back-reaction into account. First, we show that the vibrational mode responsible for the resonance structure of the $ϕ^4$ model has the same frequency as the energy of the fermion excited state when the back-reaction becomes more significant. Second, we consider the sine-Gordon model with the addition of a fermion field and find that a resonant structure appears, despite the absence of a scalar vibrational mode. The vibrational…
