Journal of High Energy Physics (Dec 2022)

Spontaneous emission from excited quantum kinks

  • Jarah Evslin,
  • Alberto García Martín-Caro

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2022)111
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2022, no. 12
pp. 1 – 18

Abstract

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Abstract Many kink solutions enjoy internal excitations, called shape modes. In some 1+1d scalar models, such as the ϕ 4 double-well model, when a kink’s shape mode is excited twice it may decay to a ground state kink plus a meson. We analytically calculate the decay rates of both the twice-excited shape mode and also a coherent state corresponding to the classically excited shape mode. In the case of the ϕ 4 model, we find that the latter agrees with the classical result of Manton and Merabet.

Keywords