Kinks in discrete light cone quantization

Abstract We investigate non-trivial topological structures in discrete light cone quantization (DLCQ) through the example of the broken symmetry phase of the two-dimensional φ4 theory using antiperiodic boundary condition (APBC). We present evidence for degenerate ground states which is both a signature of spontaneous symmetry breaking and mandatory for the existence of kinks. Guided by a constrained variational calculation with a coherent state ansatz, we then extract the vacuum energy and kink mass and compare with classical and semi-classical results. We compare the DLCQ results for the number density of bosons in the kink state and the Fourier transform of the form factor of the kink with corresponding observables in the coherent variational kink state.