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Resonance structures in kink-antikink scattering in a quantum vacuum

Mainak Mukhopadhyay,T. Vachaspati

2023 · DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.107.116017
13 Citations

Abstract

We investigate kink-antikink scattering in the λϕ4\lambda \phi^4 model in the presence of an additional scalar field, ψ\psi, that is in its quantum vacuum and interacts with ϕ\phi via a ξϕ2ψ2\xi \phi^2\psi^2 term where ξ\xi is the coupling. The final state of such a scattering is either a bound state with eventual annihilation or a reflection of the kink-antikink pair. Without the ψ\psi field, the outcome is known to depend fractally on the initial velocity of the kink-antikink pair. In the quantum vacuum of the ψ\psi field, the fractal dependence gets modified and disappears above a critical interaction strength, ξ≈0.1\xi \approx 0.1.