Negative radiation pressure in the abelian Higgs model

Abstract

Interactions of small-amplitude monochromatic plane waves with domain walls in (1+1) dimensional abelian Higgs model with a sextic potential were studied. The effective force exerted on a domain wall was derived from a linearized equation and compared with numerical simulations of the original model. It was shown that the domain walls always accelerate in one direction, regardless of the direction of the incoming wave. This implies that in some cases an effect called negative radiation pressure is observed, i.e. instead of pushing, the wave pulls the soliton.