The volume of a vortex and the Bradlow bound

Abstract

We demonstrate that the geometric volume of a soliton coincides with the thermodynamical volume also for field theories with higher-dimensional vacuum manifolds (e.g., for gauged scalar field theories supporting vortices or monopoles). We apply this observation to understand Bradlow type bounds for general abelian gauge theories supporting vortices. In the case of SDiff BPS models (being examples of perfect fluid models) we show that the geometric "volume" (area) of the vortex, which is base-space independent, is exactly equal to the Bradlow volume (a minimal volume for which a BPS soliton solution exists). This can be finite for compactons or infinite for infinitely extended solitons (in flat Minkowski space-time).

Latex, 31 pages, 1 figure