English

Two-Loop Scalar Kinks

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-06-23 v2

Abstract

At one loop, quantum kinks are described by a sum of quantum harmonic oscillator Hamiltonians, and the ground state is just the product of the oscillator ground states. Two-loop kink masses are only known in integrable and supersymmetric cases and two-loop states have never been found. We find the two-loop kink mass and explicitly construct the two-loop kink ground state in a scalar field theory with an arbitrary nonderivative potential. We use a coherent state operator which maps the vacuum sector to the kink sector, allowing all states to be treated with a single Hamiltonian which needs to be renormalized only once, eliminating the need for regulator matching conditions. Our calculation is greatly simplified by a recently introduced alternative to collective coordinates, in which the kink momentum is fixed perturbatively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.04912,
  title  = {Two-Loop Scalar Kinks},
  author = {Jarah Evslin and Hengyuan Guo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.04912},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

26+14 pages, 5 PDF figures, v2 typo fixed

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:50:17.516Z