Remarks on Decay of Defects with Internal Degrees of Freedom

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decay processes of metastable walls and strings with internal degrees of freedom, revealing fermion escape phenomena, wall stabilization in magnetic fields, and potential higher-dimensional effects related to the chiral magnetic effect.

Contribution

It introduces new insights into the decay dynamics of metastable defects with internal degrees of freedom, including fermion escape and stabilization mechanisms in magnetic fields.

Findings

Fermions escape from decaying walls, exemplifying the chiral magnetic effect.

Metastable walls can be stabilized in large magnetic fields.

Potential higher-dimensional generalizations of the chiral magnetic effect are discussed.

Abstract

We consider the decay of metastable walls and strings populated by additional degrees of freedom. The examples involve the decay of an axion wall in an external magnetic field, pionic walls, metastable walls in dense QCD. It is shown that the induced fermions escape from the wall during the decay process providing an example of the chiral magnetic effect. An absolute stabilization of metastable and unstable walls in a large magnetic field is found. A possible higher dimensional generalization of the chiral magnetic effect is mentioned.