A realistic heat bath: theory and application to kink-antikink dynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for simulating real-time evolution of field systems coupled to a realistic heat bath, applied specifically to kink-antikink interactions in 1+1 dimensional $^4$ theory.

Contribution

It develops a new approach for boundary coupling to heat baths in field theories, enabling realistic simulations of non-equilibrium dynamics.

Findings

Method effectively models boundary heat bath interactions.

Applied to kink-antikink dynamics in $^4$ theory.

Provides insights into real-time thermal effects on soliton interactions.

Abstract

We propose a new method of studying a real-time canonical evolution of field-theoretic systems with boundary coupling to a realistic heat bath. In the free-field case the method is equivalent to an infinite extension of the system beyond the boundary, while in the interacting case the extension of the system is done in linear approximation. We use this technique to study kink-antikink dynamics in $\varphi^4$ field theory in 1+1 dimensions.