Stable Solitons in Field Theory Models for Tachyon Condensation

TL;DR

This paper investigates soliton solutions in scalar field theories with various potentials, identifying conditions for stability and the spectral properties of fluctuations, including the presence of tachyonic modes and Goldstone modes.

Contribution

It classifies stable and unstable soliton solutions in different scalar potentials and links their stability to supersymmetric quantum mechanics.

Findings

Gaussian lump solutions with tachyonic instability

Stable kink solutions with non-equispaced spectra

Goldstone modes restoring translation invariance

Abstract

We study soliton solutions in scalar field theory with a variety of unbounded potentials. A subset of these potentials have Gaussian lump solutions and their fluctuation spectrum is governed by the harmonic oscillator problem. These lumps are unstable with one tachyonic mode. Soliton solutions in several other classes of potentials are stable and are of kink type. The problem of the stability of these solutions is related to a supersymmetric quantum mechanics problem. The fluctuation spectrum is not equispaced and does not contain any tachyonic mode. The lowest energy mode is the massless Goldstone mode which restores broken translation invariance.