On formation of domain wall lattices

Abstract

We study the formation of domain walls in a phase transition in which an S_5\times Z_2 symmetry is spontaneously broken to S_3\times S_2. In one compact spatial dimension we observe the formation of a stable domain wall lattice. In two spatial dimensions we find that the walls form a network with junctions, there being six walls to every junction. The network of domain walls evolves so that junctions annihilate anti-junctions. The final state of the evolution depends on the relative dimensions of the simulation domain. In particular we never observe the formation of a stable lattice of domain walls for the case of a square domain but we do observe a lattice if one dimension is somewhat smaller than the other. During the evolution, the total wall length in the network decays with time as t^{-0.71}, as opposed to the usual t^{-1} scaling typical of regular Z_2 networks.

Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes, final version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D