English

Faddeev-Hopf knots: Dynamics of linked un-knots

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-10-31 v1

Abstract

We have studied numerically Faddeev-Hopf knots, which are defined as those unit-vector fields in R3R^3 that have a nontrivial Hopf charge and minimize Faddeev's Lagrangian. A given initial configuration was allowed to relax into a (local) minimum using the first order dissipative dynamics corresponding to the steepest descent method. A linked combination of two un-knots was seen to relax into different minimum energy configurations depending on their charges and their relative handedness and direction. In order to visualize the results we plot certain gauge-invariant iso-surfaces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9811053,
  title  = {Faddeev-Hopf knots: Dynamics of linked un-knots},
  author = {Jarmo Hietarinta and Petri Salo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9811053},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages with 6 figures (3 in color)