Condensation of vortex-strings: effective potential contribution through dual actions

• Autor(a) principal: Ramos,Rudnei O.
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Outros Autores: Barci,Daniel G., Linhares,Cesar A., Medeiros Neto,J. F.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Physics
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-97332007000200015
• topic: Dual models; Vortices; Phase transitions

Topological excitations are believed to play an important role in different areas of physics. For example, one case of topical interest is the use of dual models of quantum cromodynamics to understand properties of the vacuum and confinement through the condensation of magnetic monopoles and vortices. Other applications are related to the role of these topological excitations, nonhomogeneous solutions of the field equations, in phase transitions associated to spontaneous symmetry breaking in gauge theories, whose study is of importance, for instance, in phase transitions in the early universe. Here we show a derivation of a model dual to the scalar Abelian Higgs model where its topological excitations, namely vortex-strings, become manifest and can be treated in a quantum field theory way. The derivation of the nontrivial contribution of these vacuum excitations to phase transitions and its analogy with superconductivity is then made possible and they are studied here.