Dynamics of topological defects in nonlinear field theories

Abstract

We survey recent results that characterize the dynamics, in a certain asymptotic limit, of interfaces in certain semilinear hyperbolic equations, as well as vortex filaments in semilinear hyperbolic systems. This survey includes a lengthy discussion of heuristic considerations, together with some complete proofs in simple model cases. We also present some novel recent approaches to problem that geometric evolution problem of timelike extremal submanifolds of Minkowski space, which governs the asymptotic dynamics of interfaces and vortex filaments.