arXiv subjects

Paul Sutcliffe

Publications and source records attributed to Paul Sutcliffe.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2003

Instantons and the Buckyball

The study of Skyrmions predicts that there is an icosahedrally symmetric charge seventeen SU(2) Yang-Mills instanton in which the topological charge density, for fixed Euclidean time, is localized on the edges of the truncated icosahedron of the buckyball. In this paper the existence of such an instanton is proved by explicit construction of the associated ADHM data. A topological charge density isosurface is displayed which verifies the buckyball structure of the instanton.

hep-th↗

arXiv2003

Domain wall networks on solitons

Domain wall networks on the surface of a soliton are studied in a simple theory. It consists of two complex scalar fields, in (3+1)-dimensions, with a global U(1) x Z_n symmetry, where n>2. Solutions are computed numerically in which one of the fields forms a Q-ball and the other field forms a network of domain walls localized on the surface of the Q-ball. Examples are presented in which the domain walls lie along the edges of a spherical polyhedron, forming junctions at its vertices. It is explained why only a small restricted class of polyhedra can arise as domain wall networks.

hep-th↗

arXiv2003

On the Stability of Knots in Excitable Media

Through extensive numerical simulations we investigate the evolution of knotted and linked vortices in the FitzHugh-Nagumo model. On medium time scales, of the order of a hundred times the vortex rotation period, knots simultaneously translate and precess with very little change of shape. However, on long time scales we find that knots evolve in a more complicated manner, with particular arcs expanding and contracting, producing substantial variations in the total length. The topology of a knot is preserved during the evolution and after several thousand vortex rotation periods the knot appears to approach an asymptotic state. Furthermore, this asymptotic state is dependent upon the initial conditions and suggests that, even within a given topology, a host of meta-stable configurations exist, rather than a unique stable solution. We discuss a possible mechanism for the observed evolution, associated with the impact of higher frequency wavefronts emanating from parts of the knot which are more twisted than the expanding arcs.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2003

Polyhedra in physics, chemistry and geometry

In this article we review some problems in physics, chemistry and mathematics that lead naturally to a class of polyhedra which include the Platonic solids. Examples include the study of electrons on a sphere, cages of carbon atoms, central configurations of gravitating point particles, rare gas microclusters, soliton models of nuclei, magnetic monopole scattering and geometrical problems concerning point particles.

math-ph↗

arXiv2002

Polyhedral Scattering of Fundamental Monopoles

The dynamics of n slowly moving fundamental monopoles in the SU(n+1) BPS Yang-Mills-Higgs theory can be approximated by geodesic motion on the 4n-dimensional hyperkahler Lee-Weinberg-Yi manifold. In this paper we apply a variational method to construct some scaling geodesics on this manifold. These geodesics describe the scattering of n monopoles which lie on the vertices of a bouncing polyhedron; the polyhedron contracts from infinity to a point, representing the spherically symmetric n-monopole, and then expands back out to infinity. For different monopole masses the solutions generalize to form bouncing nested polyhedra. The relevance of these results to the dynamics of well separated SU(2) monopoles is also discussed.

hep-th↗

arXiv2002

Icosahedral Skyrmions

In this paper we aim to determine the baryon numbers at which the minimal energy Skyrmion has icosahedral symmetry. By comparing polyhedra which arise as minimal energy Skyrmions with the dual of polyhedra that minimize the energy of Coulomb charges on a sphere, we are led to conjecture a sequence of magic baryon numbers, B=7,17,37,67,97,... at which the minimal energy Skyrmion has icosahedral symmetry and unusually low energy. We present evidence for this conjecture by applying a simulated annealing algorithm to compute energy minimizing rational maps for all degrees upto 40. Further evidence is provided by the explicit construction of icosahedrally symmetric rational maps of degrees 37, 47, 67 and 97. To calculate these maps we introduce two new methods for computing rational maps with Platonic symmetries.

hep-th↗

arXiv2002

Central Configurations in Three Dimensions

We consider the equilibria of point particles under the action of two body central forces in which there are both repulsive and attractive interactions, often known as central configurations, with diverse applications in physics, in particular as homothetic time-dependent solutions to Newton's equations of motion and as stationary states in the One Component Plasma model. Concentrating mainly on the case of an inverse square law balanced by a linear force, we compute numerically equilibria and their statistical properties. When all the masses (or charges) of the particles are equal, for small numbers of points they are regular convex deltahedra, which on increasing the number of points give way to a multi-shell structure. In the limit of a large number of points we argue using an analytic model that they form a homogeneous spherical distribution of points, whose spatial distribution appears, from our preliminary investigation, to be similar to that of a Bernal hard-sphere liquid.

hep-th↗

arXiv2001

The Geometry of Point Particles

There is a very natural map from the configuration space of n distinct points in Euclidean 3-space into the flag manifold U(n)/U(1)^n, which is compatible with the action of the symmetric group. The map is well-defined for all configurations of points provided a certain conjecture holds, for which we provide numerical evidence. We propose some additional conjectures, which imply the first, and test these numerically. Motivated by the above map, we define a geometrical multi-particle energy function and compute the energy minimizing configurations for up to 32 particles. These configurations comprise the vertices of polyhedral structures which are dual to those found in a number of complicated physical theories, such as Skyrmions and fullerenes. Comparisons with 2-particle and 3-particle energy functions are made. The planar restriction and the generalization to hyperbolic 3-space are also investigated.

hep-th↗

arXiv2001

Skyrmions, Fullerenes and Rational Maps

We apply two very different approaches to calculate Skyrmions with baryon number B less than 23. The first employs the rational map ansatz, where approximate charge B Skyrmions are constructed from a degree B rational map between Riemann spheres. We use a simulated annealing algorithm to search for the minimal energy rational map of a given degree B. The second involves the numerical solution of the full non-linear time dependent equations of motion, with initial conditions consisting of a number of well separated Skyrmion clusters. In general, we find a good agreement between the two approaches. For B greater than 6 almost all the solutions are of fullerene type, that is, the baryon density isosurface consists of twelve pentagons and 2B-14 hexagons arranged in a trivalent polyhedron. There are exceptional cases where this structure is modified, which we discuss in detail. We find that for a given value of B there are often many Skyrmions, with different symmetries, whose energies are very close to the minimal value, some of which we discuss. We present rational maps which are good approximations to these Skyrmions and accurately compute their energy by relaxation using the full non-linear dynamics.

hep-th↗

arXiv2001

Soliton dynamics in 3D ferromagnets

We study the dynamics of solitons in a Landau-Lifshitz equation describing the magnetization of a three-dimensional ferromagnet with an easy axis anisotropy. We numerically compute the energy dispersion relation and the structure of moving solitons, using a constrained minimization algorithm. We compare the results with those obtained using an approximate form for the moving soliton, valid in the small momentum limit. We also study the interaction and scattering of two solitons, through a numerical simulation of the (3+1)-dimensional equations of motion. We find that the force between two solitons can be either attractive or repulsive depending on their relative internal phase and that in a collision two solitons can form an unstable oscillating loop of magnons.

cond-mat↗

arXiv2000

Q-ball Dynamics

We investigate the dynamics of Q-balls in one, two and three space dimensions, using numerical simulations of the full nonlinear equations of motion. We find that the dynamics of Q-balls is extremely complex, involving processes such as charge transfer and Q-ball fission. We present results of simulations which illustrate the salient features of 2-Q-ball interactions and give qualitative arguments to explain them in terms of the evolution of the time-dependent phases.

hep-th↗

arXiv1999

Non-BPS Dirac-Born-Infeld Solitons

We show that CPn sigma model solitons solve the field equations of a Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action and, furthermore, we prove that the non-BPS soliton/anti-soliton solutions of the sigma model also solve the DBI equations. Using the moduli space approximation we compare the dynamics of the BPS sigma model solitons with that of the associated DBI solitons. We find that for the CP1 case the metric on the moduli space of sigma model solitons is identical to that of the moduli space of DBI solitons, but for CPn with n>1 we show that the two metrics are not equal. We also consider the possibility of similar non-BPS solitons in other DBI theories.

hep-th↗

arXiv1999

Monopoles and Harmonic Maps

Recently Jarvis has proved a correspondence between SU(N) monopoles and rational maps of the Riemann sphere into flag manifolds. Furthermore, he has outlined a construction to obtain the monopole fields from the rational map. In this paper we examine this construction in some detail and provide explicit examples for spherically symmetric SU(N) monopoles with various symmetry breakings. In particular we show how to obtain these monopoles from harmonic maps into complex projective spaces. The approach extends in a natural way to monopoles in hyperbolic space and we use it to construct new spherically symmetric SU(N) hyperbolic monopoles.

hep-th↗

arXiv1999

Non-BPS String Junctions and Dyons in N=4 Super-Yang-Mills

We construct non-BPS dyon solutions of N=4 SU(n) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. These solutions are the worldvolume solitons which describe non-BPS Type IIB non-planar string junctions connecting n parallel D3-branes. The solutions are smooth deformations of the 1/4 BPS states which describe planar string junctions.

hep-th↗

arXiv1999

Monopoles from Rational Maps

The moduli space of charge k SU(2) BPS monopoles is diffeomorphic to the moduli space of degree k rational maps between Riemann spheres. In this note we describe a numerical algorithm to compute the monopole fields and energy density from the rational map. The results for some symmetric examples are presented.

hep-th↗

arXiv1999

Symmetric Instantons and Skyrme Fields

By explicit construction of the ADHM data, we prove the existence of a charge seven instanton with icosahedral symmetry. By computing the holonomy of this instanton we obtain a Skyrme field which approximates the minimal energy charge seven Skyrmion. We also present a one parameter family of tetrahedrally symmetric instantons whose holonomy gives a family of Skyrme fields which models a Skyrmion scattering process, where seven well-separated Skyrmions collide to form the icosahedrally symmetric Skyrmion.

hep-th↗

arXiv1998

Solitons, Links and Knots

Using numerical simulations of the full nonlinear equations of motion we investigate topological solitons of a modified O(3) sigma model in three space dimensions, in which the solitons are stabilized by the Hopf charge. We find that for solitons up to charge five the solutions have the structure of closed strings, which become increasingly twisted as the charge increases. However, for higher charge the solutions are more exotic and comprise linked loops and knots. We discuss the structure and formation of these solitons and demonstrate that the key property responsible for producing such a rich variety of solitons is that of string reconnection.

hep-th↗

arXiv1997

Rational Maps, Monopoles and Skyrmions

We discuss the similarities between BPS monopoles and Skyrmions, and point to an underlying connection in terms of rational maps between Riemann spheres. This involves the introduction of a new ansatz for Skyrme fields. We use this to construct good approximations to several known Skyrmions, including all the minimal energy configurations up to baryon number nine, and some new solutions such as a baryon number seventeen Skyrme field with the truncated icosahedron structure of a buckyball. The new approach is also used to understand the low-lying vibrational modes of Skyrmions, which are required for quantization. Along the way we discover an interesting Morse function on the space of rational maps which may be of use in understanding the Sen forms on the monopole moduli spaces.

hep-th↗