Soliton tunneling

Abstract

We present a numerical simulation of the scattering of a topological soliton off finite size attractive impurities, repulsive impurities and a combination of both. The attractive and attractive-repulsive cases show similar features to those found for $\delta$ function type of impurities. For the repulsive case, corresponding to a finite width barrier, the soliton behaves completely classically. No tunneling occurs for sub-barrier kinetic energies despite the extended nature of the soliton.

Comments: Latex source, 5 postscipt figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review E, rapid communications