Related papers: Semilocal Defects
We review the subject of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. First we consider supersymmetry breaking in a semiclassical theory. We illustrate it with several examples, demonstrating different phenomena, including metastable supersymmetry…
This paper examines thermodynamic stability of chiral domain walls and vortices - topological defects which can exist in chiral superconductors. Using London theory it is demonstrated that at sufficiently small applied and chiral fields the…
Recently, a geometric model for the confinement of magnetic charges in the context of type II string compactifications was constructed by Greene, Morrison and Vafa. This model assumes the existence of stable magnetic vortices with quantized…
I study the spontaneous breakdown of supersymmetry when higher-dimensional Yang-Mills or the type-I $SO(32)$ string theory are compactified on magnetized tori. Because of the universal gyromagnetic ratio $g=2$, the splittings of all…
We investigate spontaneous symmetry breaking in a conformally invariant gravitational model. In particular, we use a conformally invariant scalar tensor theory as the vacuum sector of a gravitational model to examine the idea that…
Topological defects in ordered states with spontaneously broken symmetry often have unusual physical properties, such as fractional electric charge or a quantised magnetic field-flux, originating from their non-trivial topology. Coupled…
Superconductors are the only experimentally accessible systems with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries which support topologically nontrivial defects, namely string defects. We propose two experiments whose aim is the observation of the…
The order parameters which are thought to detect U(1) gauge symmetry breaking in a superconductor are both non-local and gauge dependent. For that reason they are also ambiguous as a guide to phase structure. We point out that a global…
We investigate the chiral properties of near-zero modes for thick classical center vortices in SU (2) lattice gauge theory as examples of the phenomena which may arise in a vortex vacuum. In particular we analyze the creation of near-zero…
Linear defects are generic in continuous media. In quantum systems they appear as topological line defects which are associated with a circulating persistent current. In relativistic quantum vacuum they are known as cosmic strings, in…
We show that in certain theories with topologically trivial quotient space of spontaneously broken gauge symmetry there can exist topologically stable strings that carry nonabelian gauge flux. These objects result from the ``accidental''…
We present a study of the 3d O(2) non-linear $\sigma$-model on the lattice, which exhibits topological defects in the form of vortices. They tend to organize into vortex lines that bear close analogies with global cosmic strings. Therefore,…
Topological defects (such as monopoles, vortex lines, or domain walls) mark locations where disparate choices of a broken symmetry vacuum elsewhere in the system lead to irreconcilable differences. They are energetically costly (the energy…
Vortices symmetric with respect to simultaneous parity and time reversing transformations are considered on the square lattice in the framework of the discrete nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation. The existence and stability of vortex…
We investigate a D-brane system in which spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking occurs. The system consists of four D3-branes and three anti-D7-branes at C^3/Z_3 singularity. The singularity is blown up by vacuum expectation values of the…
We study the statistics of vortices which appear in (2+1)--dimensional spontaneously broken gauge theories, where a compact group G breaks to a finite nonabelian subgroup H. Two simple models are presented. In the first, a quantum state…
The study of topological defects occurring in vector and tensor fields is an intriguing subject and little explored in the literature. In this article, we analyze the topological defects arising from the spontaneous violation of Lorentz…
This review describes the role of magnetic symmetry in 2+1 dimensional gauge theories. In confining theories without matter fields in fundamental representation the magnetic symmetry is spontaneously broken. Under some mild assumptions, the…
We will analyze through a first order perturbative formulation the local loss of symmetry when a source of electromagnetic and gravitational field interacts with an agent that perturbs the original geometry associated to the source. As the…
It has been shown that superconducting vortices with antiferromagnetic cores arise within Zhang's SO(5) model of high temperature supercondictivity. Similar phenomena where the symmetry is not restored in the core of the vortex was…