Examples of vacuum polarization by solitons

Abstract
Adiabatic calculations of vacuum polarization of fermion fields by solitons are reviewed and extended, and their proper interpretation elucidated. Possible solitons in the strong and weak interactions are discussed as examples. It is emphasized that the ground-state charge can depend on the scale of the soliton, with the adiabatic result holding for fermions with large mass. The very different physical implications of vacuum polarization effects for scalar fields are mentioned. The dual phenomenon, whereby heavy particles carrying conserved quantum numbers induce solitons, is briefly discussed and contrasted.

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