Importance of boundary conditions for topological production of textures and Skyrmions

Journal Article · Fri Feb 15 04:00:00 EST 1991 · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.43.1047· OSTI ID:5865052

Srivastava, A M ^[1]

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1. Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, 116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 (US)

The Kibble mechanism has recently been used to estimate the production of topological objects such as Skyrmions in hadronic events and textures in the context of the Universe. These objects correspond to a nontrivial third homotopy group of an appropriate group manifold. We discuss the importance of boundary conditions required for a topological description of such objects. These considerations show that textures do not have any topological meaning in the context of a homogeneous and isotropic universe and actually are homotopic to trivial configurations (as long as the universe is much bigger than the horizon size). We point out (and as has been noted by others) that a scale-invariant distribution of density fluctuations is expected for the spontaneous breaking of any global symmetry as long as the connected component of the vacuum manifold is degenerate. It does not matter whether the vacuum manifold has any nontrivial homotopy group. For the case of Skyrmion production in hadronic events, our considerations lead to a strong suppression of the Skyrmion production. A recent numerical simulation of the texture formation found that textures rarely occur. Our results provide a simple explanation of this result.

• OSTI ID: 5865052
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA), Journal Name: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA) Vol. 43:4; ISSN PRVDA; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

645204* -- High Energy Physics-- Particle Interactions & Properties-Theoretical-- Strong Interactions & Properties
645300 -- High Energy Physics-- Particle Invariance Principles & Symmetries
645400 -- High Energy Physics-- Field Theory
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
COMPOSITE MODELS
DOMAIN STRUCTURE
EXTENDED PARTICLE MODEL
FIELD THEORIES
HADRON-HADRON INTERACTIONS
INTERACTIONS
JET MODEL
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUCLEON-NUCLEON POTENTIAL
PARTICLE INTERACTIONS
PARTICLE MODELS
PARTICLE PRODUCTION
POTENTIALS
PROBABILITY
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
QUARK MODEL
QUASI PARTICLES
SKYRME POTENTIAL
SOLITONS
STRING MODELS
SYMMETRY BREAKING
TEXTURE
UNIVERSE
VACUUM STATES