Forces between kinks in ϕ8 theory

Abstract

Abstract We investigate the dynamics of the kinks that emerge in a one-dimensional scalar field theory with an octic potential containing a quartic minimum and two quadratic minima. We show analytically that kink-antikink and kink-kink pairs interact with a force that scales with the fourth power of the inter-kink distance, and calculate its strength. This is done using two different techniques. The first employs a collective coordinate method to approximately solve the equation of motion for the profile of an accelerating kink. The second is based on modifying the potential to one that is able to support static solutions containing multiple kinks. We show that the two methods give consistent results. All calculations are supported by numerical work that confirms the validity of our results.