# Tag Info

## Hot answers tagged solitons

37 votes

### Will tsunami waves travel forever if there was no land?

The waves will not travel forever. Water particles moving against and around each other will have friction, and the friction will cause motion energy to be converted to heat (which will dissipate ...
22 votes

### Will tsunami waves travel forever if there was no land?

To answer this, I would appeal to the general principle which we call the 2nd law of thermodynamics. One way of expressing it is that the entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease. This means that ...
• 48.8k
13 votes

### Will tsunami waves travel forever if there was no land?

Of course, no. Tsunamis are a series of pressure waves with a longitudinal mode and have much higher wavelengths, speed, and period than the normal ones. Normal ocean waves only involve motion of the ...
• 3,192
9 votes
Accepted

### Moduli spaces in string theory vs. soliton theory

This is a situation where knowing the history of the terminology can be helpful. The QFT/string theory terminology comes from algebraic geometry, where the term moduli space is used for any space ...
• 15.6k
9 votes
Accepted

### About solitons, what is the difference between kinks and vortices?

A soliton is a localized, non-dispersive solution of a nonlinear theory in Euclidean space. It certainly is a real object: you have a famous story about a certain John Russell who observed soliton-...
• 374
7 votes
Accepted

### Explanation of the waves on the water planet in the movie Interstellar?

The following interpretations are taken from Thorne [2014]. Chapter 17, entitled Miller's Planet, discusses the issue of the large waves on the water planet in the movie Interstellar. There Kip ...
• 14.7k
7 votes
Accepted

### KdV suggests a connection between waves in shallow water and the potential in the Schrödinger equation. What is the intuitive explanation?

I'm not sure what intuition you are seeking in similarities of mathematical modeling... It's like intuition about the similar beat of two very different pieces of music? I fear it is all in the math. ...
7 votes
Accepted

### How to Diagonalize Self-Interacting Scalar Hamiltonian for Mass Term from Polyakov Paper?

can someone point me in the right direction at least to diagonalize the modified Hamiltonian? This answer explains how to diagonalize the Hamiltonian and how to derive the $n$-dependent term in $M_n$....
• 51.8k
7 votes

### Erik Lentz's faster-than-light soliton

This new question links a recent paper J. Santiago, S. Schuster and M. Visser, 2021, “Generic warp drives violate the null energy condition”, arXiv:2105.03079. which counts as “technical analysis” ...
• 13.1k
7 votes
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• 8,609
5 votes
Accepted

### Distinction of Dirac monopole and Polyakov-'t Hooft monopole

A (generalized) 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole and a Dirac monopole with a Dirac string attached are two types of magnetic monopoles, which differ in several ways, as OP and user ACuriousMind correctly ...
• 175k
5 votes
Accepted

### What is the intuition for topological currents?

The topological charge which is the space integral of the zeroth component of the topological curent is responsible for the stability of the kink: A configuration with a nonvanishing topological ...
• 29.3k
5 votes

### Spontaneous discrete symmetry breaking always implies domain walls

If we start in the unbroken phase, and if there are multiple degenerate vacua after spontaneously breaking the symmetry, generically we should have domain walls. The reason is that as we pass the ...
• 6,712
4 votes

### $\phi^4$ theory kinks as fermions?

Quantum fluctuations in the kink sectors of Sin-Gordon and the quartic interaction theory are described by reflectionless Pöschl-Teller-Operators, which form a SUSY-Chain with $N$ elements. The second ...
• 333
4 votes

### Do plane waves exist in nature?

Plane waves are useful because we can take any physical function of space, e.g. some field, and Fourier transform it to represent it as a sum (well, integral) of plane waves. This is often a very ...
• 336k
4 votes

• 6,416
3 votes

### M branes/D branes are solitons?

A brane is not "by definition" "just a soliton". What is true is that the M2- and the M5-branes are mostly described by being certain "solitonic" solutions to eleven-dimensional supergravity. "...
• 111k

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