Revisiting Soliton Contributions to Perturbative Amplitudes

Abstract

It is often said that soliton contributions to perturbative processes in QFT are exponentially suppressed by a form factor. We provide a new derivation of this form factor for a class of scalar theories with generic soliton moduli. The derivation treats the soliton momenta relativistically and is valid at leading order in momentum transfer. The computation reduces to a matrix element in the quantum mechanics on the soliton moduli space. We investigate the conditions under which the latter leads to suppression. Extending this framework to instanton-solitons in five-dimensional Yang-Mills theory leaves open the possibility that such contributions will not be suppressed.