Negative radiation pressure exerted on kinks

The interaction of a kink and a monochromatic plane wave in one dimensional scalar field theories is studied. It is shown that in a large class of models the radiation pressure exerted on the kink is negative, i.e. the kink is pulled towards the source of the radiation. This effect has been observed by numerical simulations in the phi(4) model, and it is explained by a perturbative calculation assuming that the amplitude of the incoming wave is small. Quite importantly the effect is shown to be robust against small perturbations of the phi(4) model. In the sine-Gordon (SG) model the time-averaged radiation pressure acting on the kink turns out to be zero. The results of the perturbative computations in the SG model are shown to be in full agreement with an analytical solution corresponding to the superposition of a SG kink with a cnoidal wave. It is also demonstrated that the acceleration of the kink satisfies Newton's law.