Convergence of the self-dual abelian Higgs gradient flow

TL;DR

This paper proves exponential convergence of the self-dual abelian Higgs gradient flow on b2 to a minimizer when starting near minimal energy, with improved convergence conditions and stability results.

Contribution

It establishes exponential convergence of the flow to a minimizer and improves stability results, partially resolving an open problem in the field.

Findings

Flow converges exponentially to a minimizer in the b1H^1 d7 L^2 metric.

Scalar field convergence can be upgraded to H^1 under additional assumptions.

Provides a quantitative stability result that improves previous work.

Abstract

Given an initial data configuration $(A^{\mathrm{in}}, \phi^{\mathrm{in}})$ on $\mathbb R^2$ such that the self-dual abelian Higgs energy is near the minimum energy within its topological class, we prove that its evolution under the self-dual abelian Higgs gradient flow in temporal gauge converges exponentially as $t \to \infty$ with respect to the $(H^1 \times L^2)$-metric to a minimiser of the energy. Furthermore, we show that the convergence of the scalar field $\phi$ may be upgraded to the $H^1$-metric provided the additional assumption on the potential that $A^{\mathrm{in}} \in L^p (\mathbb R^2)$ for $2 < p < \infty$. As a corollary, we obtain a quantitative stability for the self-dual abelian Higgs energy which improves upon the previous result of Halavati (arXiv:2310.04866) and partially resolves the open problem posed in his article.