Kink-antikink collisions in hyper-massive models

TL;DR

This paper investigates how kink-antikink collisions in scalar field models vary with the mass parameter, revealing the disappearance of capture phenomena at certain intermediary masses and modeling these interactions with collective coordinates.

Contribution

It introduces a family of scalar field models with variable mass parameters, analyzing their impact on kink-antikink collision dynamics and capturing the transition from well-known to non-analytic potentials.

Findings

Capture cases disappear at intermediary masses.

Main scattering features are reproduced by a collective coordinates model.

Kink-antikink interactions depend strongly on the model's mass parameter.

Abstract

We study topological kinks and their interactions in a family of scalar field models with a double well potential parametrized by the mass of small perturbations around the vacua, ranging from the mass of the $\phi^4$ Klein-Gordon model all the way to the limit of infinite mass, which is identified with a non-analytic potential. In particular, we look at the problem of kink-antikink collisions and analyze the windows of capture and escape of the soliton pair as a function of collision velocity and model mass. We observe a disappearance of the capture cases for intermediary masses between the $\phi^4$ and non-analytic cases. The main features of the kink-antikink scattering are reproduced in a collective coordinates model, including the disappearance of the capture cases.