Dynamics of the infinitely-thin kink

Abstract

We consider the dynamics of the domain-wall kink soliton, in particular we study the zero mode of translation. In the infinitely-thin kink limit, we show that the zero mode is almost completely frozen out, the only remnant being a dynamically constrained four-dimensional mode of a single but arbitrary frequency. In relation to this result, we show that the usual mode expansion for dealing with zero modes -- implicit collective coordinates -- is not in fact a completely general expansion, and that one must use instead a traditional generalised Fourier analysis.