Head butting sheep: Kink Collisions in the Presence of False Vacua

TL;DR

This paper numerically explores complex kink collision behaviors in a two-field scalar theory with multiple vacua, revealing diverse outcomes like repulsion, annihilation, and domain wall formation depending on initial conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical study of kink collisions in a multi-vacua scalar field model with novel scattering phenomena.

Findings

Kinks exhibit a variety of scattering behaviors including repulsion and annihilation.

The model demonstrates formation of true and false domain walls during collisions.

Impact velocity and initial setup critically influence collision outcomes.

Abstract

We investigate numerically kink collisions in a $1+1$ dimensional scalar field theory with multiple vacua. The domain wall model we are interested in involves two scalar fields and a potential term built from an asymmetric double well and (double) sine-Gordon potential together with an interaction term. Depending on the initial kink setup and impact velocities, the model allows for a wide range of scattering behaviours. Kinks can repel each other, annihilate, form true or false domain walls and reflect off each other.