Topological Defects from First Order Gauge Theory Phase Transitions

Abstract

We investigate the mechanism by which topological defects form in first order phase transitions with a charged order parameter. We show how thick superconductor vortices and heavy cosmic strings form by trapping of magnetic flux. In an external magnetic field, intermediate objects such as strips and membranes of magnetic flux and chains of single winding defects are produced. At non-zero temperature, a variety of spontaneous defects of different winding numbers arise. In cosmology, our results mean that the magnetic flux thermal fluctuations get trapped in a primordial multi-tension string network. The mechanism may also apply to the production of cosmic-like strings in brane collisions. In a thin type-I superconductor film, flux strips are found to be meta-stable while thick vortices are stable up to some critical value of the winding number which increases with the thickness of the film. In addition, a non-dissipative Josephson-like current is obtained across the strips of quantized magnetic flux.

Corrections made on sections 4,5. Higher quality figures in published version

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Morphogenesis of defects and tactoids during isotropic-nematic phase transition in self-assembled lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals
• Experimental determination of correlations between spontaneously formed vortices in a superconductor
• Vortex trapping in suddenly connected Bose-Josephson junctions
• Topological thermalization via vortex formation in ultra-fast quenches
• The geodesic rule for higher codimensional global defects