Vacuum polarization energy of the Shifman-Voloshin soliton

Abstract

We compute the vacuum polarization energy of soliton configurations in a model with two scalar fields in one space dimension using spectral methods. The second field represents an extension of the conventional $\phi^4$ kink soliton model. We find that the vacuum polarization energy destabilizes the soliton except when the fields have identical masses. In that case the model is equivalent to two independent $\phi^4$ models.