Quantum Stabilization of a Closed Nielsen-Olesen String

Abstract

We revisit the classical instability of closed strings in the Abelian Higgs model. The instability is expressed by a vanishing energy as the torus-like configuration shrinks to zero size. We treat the radius of the torus as a collective coordinate and demonstrate that a quantum mechanical treatment of this coordinate leads to a stabilization of the closed string at small radii.

Comments: 23 pages, pdflatex, version to be published in Phys Rev D