10 - Walls, kinks and solitons

Summary

In Chapter 9, we studied topological defects in ordered systems with a broken continuous symmetry. In this chapter, we will study fundamental defects in systems with discrete symmetry such as the Ising model. These defects are surfaces, of one dimension less than the dimension of space, that separate regions of equal free energy but with different values of the order parameter. They are variously called domain walls, kinks, solitons, discommensurations, or simply walls, depending on the particular system and context. They can also be regarded as interfaces, such as, for example, the interface separating coexisting liquid and gas phases. They play an important, if not dominant, role in determining the physical properties of systems with discrete symmetry.

We begin this chapter (Sec. 10.1) with a number of examples of walls. In Sec. 10.2, we study the continuum mean-field theory for kinks and solitons. Then, in Sec. 10.3, we discuss in some detail the Frenkel-Kontorowa model for atoms adsorbed on a periodic substrate. This will introduce in a natural way a lattice of interacting kinks (called discommensurations in this case) to describe the incommensurate phase of adsorbed monolayers. After investigating the properties of interacting kinks at zero temperature, we will in Sec. 10.4 study thermal fluctuations of walls in dimensions greater than one and show that structureless walls in three dimensions or less have divergent height fluctuations that render them macroscopically rough.