How to Count Kinks: From the Continuum to the Lattice and Back

A spatially discrete version of the general kink-bearing nonlinear Klein-Gordon model in (1+1) dimensions is constructed which preserves the topological lower bound on kink energy. It is proved that, provided the lattice spacing h is sufficiently small, there exist static kink solutions attaining this lower bound centred anywhere relative to the spatial lattice. Hence there is no Peierls-Nabarro barrier impeding the propagation of kinks in this discrete system. An upper bound...

Many complex systems are characterized by intriguing spatio-temporal structures. Their mathematical description relies on the analysis of appropriate correlation functions. Functional integral techniques provide a unifying formalism that facilitates the computation of such correlation functions and moments, and furthermore allows a systematic development of perturbation expansions and other useful approximative schemes. It is explained how nonlinear stochastic processes may b...

I review the study of real (Minkowski) time correlators in hot, weakly coupled Yang-Mills theory via lattice methods. I concentrate on the Minkowski time topological susceptibility, which is related to the efficiency of baryon number violation at high temperature. It can be computed by approximating the IR fields as classical and solving their dynamics nonperturbatively on the lattice. However it is essential to include the UV degrees of freedom. Their influence can be comput...

After a few remarks about the problem of extracting transport coefficients from lattice QCD calculations, I report on recent developments in applying stochastic quantization and complex Langevin dynamics to field theories with a complex action due to a nonzero chemical potential. First results demonstrate that the sign problem poses no obstacle for this approach, even in the thermodynamic limit. I conclude with a comparison of two simple one-link models, describing a euclidea...

The form factor provides a convenient way to describe properties of topological solitons in the full quantum theory, when semiclassical concepts are not applicable. It is demonstrated that the form factor can be calculated numerically using lattice Monte Carlo simulations. The approach is very general and can be applied to essentially any type of soliton. The technique is illustrated by calculating the kink form factor near the critical point in 1+1-dimensional scalar field t...

In this paper, we have studied the kink and antikink solutions in several neutral scalar models in 1+1 dimension. We follow the standard approach to write down the leading order and the second order force between long distance separated kink and antikink. The leading order force is proportional to exponential decay with respect to the distance between the two nearest kinks or antikinks. The second order force have a similar behavior with the larger decay factor, namely $3\ove...

We develop diffusion models for lattice gauge theories which build on the concept of stochastic quantization. This framework is applied to $U(1)$ gauge theory in $1+1$ dimensions. We show that a model trained at one small inverse coupling can be effectively transferred to larger inverse coupling without encountering issues related to topological freezing, i.e., the model can generate configurations corresponding to different couplings by introducing the Boltzmann factors as p...

Recent method developments involving path integral simulations have come a long way in making these techniques practical for studying condensed phase non-equilibrium phenomena. The main difficulty that still needs to be surmounted is that the scaling of the algorithms still depends upon the system dimensionality. The majority of recent techniques have only changed the order of this scaling and not eased the dependence on the system size. In this current work, we introduce an ...

We perform an analysis of a number of approximations and methods used in numerical simulations of real-time Kadanoff-Baym equations based on truncations of the 2PI effective action. We compare the loop expansion to the 1/N expansion and compare their classical limit to classical-statistical simulations. We also compare implementations based on a space-time lattice discretization at the level of the action to an ad hoc momentum discretization at the level of the equations of m...

In this paper we examine the scattering processes among the members of a rich family of kinks which arise in a (1+1)-dimensional relativistic two scalar field theory. These kinks carry two different topological charges that determine the mutual interactions between the basic energy lumps (extended particles) described by these topological defects. Processes like topological charge exchange, kink-antikink bound state formation or kink repulsion emerge depending on the charges ...