Winding number dependence of quantum vortex energies at one-loop

Abstract

We compute the one-loop vacuum polarization energies of Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen (ANO) vortices with topological charge $n$ in scalar electrodynamics, for the BPS case of equal gauge and scalar masses. This calculation allows us to investigate the relationship between the winding number and the quantum-corrected vortex energy, which in turn determines the stability of higher winding configurations against decay into configurations with unit winding. While the classical energy is proportional to $n$, we find that the vacuum polarization energy is negative and approximately proportional to $n-1$ with a small constant offset.

6 pages, clarifying remarks on the renormalization scheme added

References in corpus (1)

• Vacuum polarization energy of a complex scalar field in a vortex background

Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Quantum energies of BPS vortices in $D=2+1$ and $D=3+1$
• Moduli space with a boundary
• Quantum Energy Density of Cosmic Strings with Nonzero Radius