Scattering of kinks in Frankensteinian potentials: Kinks as bubbles of exotic mass and phase transitions in oscillon production

TL;DR

This paper investigates kink-anti-kink scattering in Frankensteinian potentials, revealing phase transition-like behavior where collisions produce oscillons or disintegrate into waves depending on initial velocities and field thresholds.

Contribution

It introduces a new interpretation of these models as free massive theories with particle-pair production mechanisms influencing collision outcomes.

Findings

Kinks exhibit different characteristics based on field-value thresholds.

Distribution of bouncing windows varies with model parameters.

A phase transition occurs from wave disintegration to oscillon production at low thresholds.

Abstract

We present a dynamical picture of kink-anti-kink scattering in a pair of special, Frankensteinian potentials made of piece-wise quadratic and linear pieces. Specifically, we focus on models that support kinks without skin and core regions. We propose an intuitive interpretation for these models as being essentially free massive theories with a built-in particle-pair like production mechanism that enters into the dynamics above certain field-value thresholds. We present results concerning the kink's characteristics depending on these thresholds and the distribution of bouncing windows. We show that the second model exhibits a phase-transition-like property in which the nature of collisions switches from disintegration into a massive wave to production of oscillons for large segments of initial velocities when the field threshold is low enough.