Charge screening in the Abelian Higgs model

TL;DR

This paper investigates charge screening in the Abelian Higgs model using a perturbative approach, demonstrating how electric fields are screened by the scalar field and comparing analytical results with numerical simulations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed perturbative analysis of charge screening in the Abelian Higgs model, complementing previous numerical studies.

Findings

Global screening is perfect; local screening is remarkably good.

Perturbative results agree well with numerical simulations.

Asymptotic field forms are derived from Gauss' theorem.

Abstract

In the Abelian Higgs model electric (and magnetic) fields of external charges (and currents) are screened by the scalar field. In this contribution, complementing recent investigations of Ishihara and Ogawa, we present a detailed investigation of charge screening using a perturbative approach with the charge strength as an expansion parameter. It is shown how perfect global and remarkably good local screening can be derived from Gauss' theorem, and the asymptotic form of the fields far from the sources. The perturbative results are shown to compare favourably to the numerical ones.