PREPRINT
7DEF31F8-61B2-41FE-9D0C-66E58B1840D9

# A Phase Transition in U(1) Configuration Space: Oscillons as Remnants of Vortex-Antivortex Annihilation

Marcelo Gleiser, Joel Thorarinson
arXiv:hep-th/0701294

Submitted on 31 January 2007

## Abstract

We show that the low-momentum scattering of vortex-antivortex pairs can lead to very long-lived oscillon states in 2d Abelian Higgs models. The emergence of oscillons is controlled by the ratio of scalar and vector field masses, $\beta =\left({m}_{s}/{m}_{v}{\right)}^{2}$ and can be described as a phase transition in field configuration space with critical value ${\beta }_{c}\simeq 0.13\left(6\right)±2$: only models with $\beta <{\beta }_{c}$ lead to oscillon-like remnants. The critical behavior of the system obeys a power law $O\left(\beta \right)\sim |\beta -{\beta }_{c}{|}^{o}$, where $O$ is an order parameter indicating the presence of oscillons and $o=0.2\left(2\right)±2$ is the critical exponent.

## Preprint

Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX

Subjects: High Energy Physics - Theory; Astrophysics; Condensed Matter - Superconductivity