Evolution of a kink-antikink ensemble in a quantum vacuum

Abstract

We study the $1+1$ flat spacetime dynamics of a classical field configuration corresponding to an ensemble of sine-Gordon kinks and antikinks, semi-classically coupled to a quantum field. This coupling breaks the integrability of the sine-Gordon model resulting in the background's decay into quantum radiation as kink-antikink pairs annihilate. We find evidence that, on average, the energy of the ensemble scales as $t^{-\alpha}$ with $\alpha<1$ and independent of the coupling strength or the mass of the quantum field. The generalization of this result to domain wall networks in higher spacetime dimensions could be relevant to particle production in the early universe.