Production of global vortices with quantum mediation

Abstract

We study global vortex production in (numerical) scattering experiments when the scatterer and the vortex degrees of freedom interact only due to intermediary quantum variables. We work in $2+1$ dimensions with a complex scalar field, $\phi$, that supports global vortices, a real scalar field, $\psi$, that is the scatterer, and a quantum field, $\rho$, that couples to both $\phi$ and $\psi$, acting as a mediator. We simulate the scattering of relativistic Gaussian wavepackets of $\psi$ and scan parameter space for regions where vortex-antivortex pairs are produced. The results show that vortex production is highly sensitive to the initial Gaussian parameters, and the parameter space is chaotic with ``holes" and isolated regions of vortex production.