The Two-Loop $\phi^4$ Kink Mass

Abstract

At one loop, quantum kinks are described by a free theory. The nonlinearity and so the interesting phenomenology arrives at two loops, where, for example, internal excitations couple to continuum excitations. We calculate the two-loop mass of a scalar kink. Unlike previous calculations, we include a counterterm which cancels the vacuum energy density at this order, so that our result for the kink mass is finite even when the vacuum energy density is nonzero. This allows us to apply our result to the $\phi^4$ kink, for which we obtain a two-loop mass contribution of $0.0126\lambda/m$ in terms of the coupling $\lambda$ and the meson mass $m$ evaluated at the minimum of the potential.