A fermion-soliton system: self-consistent solutions, vacuum polarization and charge quantization

Abstract

An integrable two-dimensional system related to certain fermion-soliton systems is studied. The self-consistent solutions of a static version of the system are obtained by using the tau function approach. The self-consistent solutions appear as an infinite number of topological sectors labeled by $n \in \IZ_{+}$, such that in each sector the scalar field would evolve continuously from a trivial configuration to the one with half integer topological charge. The spinor bound states are found analytically for each topological configuration of the background scalar field. The bound state energy satisfies an algebraic equation of degree $2n$, so the study of the energy spectrum finds a connection to the realm of algebraic geometry. We provide explicit computations for the topological sectors $n=1,2$. Then, by monitoring the energy spectrum, including the energy flow of any level across $E_n=0$, we discuss the vacuum polarization induced by the soliton. It is shown that the equivalence between the Noether and topological currents and the fact that the coupling constant is related to the one of the Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten (WZNW) model imply the quantization of the spinor and topological charges. Moreover, we show that the soliton mass as a function of the boson mass agrees with the Skyrmes's phenomenological conjecture. Our analytical developments improve and generalize the recent numerical results in the literature performed for a closely related model by Shahkarami and Gousheh, JHEP06(2011)116. The construction of the bound states corresponding to the topological sectors $n \geq 3$ is briefly outlined.