Spectral Methods for Coupled Channels with a Mass Gap

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spectral method to compute vacuum polarization energy for coupled scalar fields with different masses, demonstrated on a kink-like soliton in one-dimensional space.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel spectral approach for calculating vacuum polarization energy in coupled scalar field systems with mass gaps.

Findings

Successfully applied to a kink-like soliton example.

Provides a new computational tool for quantum field theories with coupled fields.

Enhances understanding of vacuum energies in systems with mass differences.

Abstract

We develop a method to compute the vacuum polarization energy for coupled scalar fields with different masses scattering off a background potential in one space dimension. As an example we consider the vacuum polarization energy of a kink-like soliton built from two real scalar fields with different mass parameters.