Dirichlet Solitons in Field Theories

Abstract

I briefly describe a new class of soliton configurations in field theories. These consist of topological defects which can end when they intersect other defects of equal or higher dimensionality. Such configurations may be termed ``Dirichlet topological defects'', in analogy with the D-branes of string theory. I provide a specific example - cosmic strings that terminate on domain walls - and discuss some new directions for this work, including an interesting and qualitatively different extension to supersymmetric theories.