Solitons show up in many fields of physics from the monopoles and models of nucleons in strong interactions, to conducting plastics and novel memory storage devices. However, solitons are largely understood using classical physics.  It is widely believed that quantum mechanics qualitatively changes some of their properties, for example causing some to quickly decay.  We will describe a new method which allows for an efficient, reliable and complete treatment of solitons in quantum physics.

In the second lecture, we will describe some recent progress in constructing quantum kinks.  We will describe how states, decay rates and scattering amplitudes may be found.  Also we will introduce oscillons, which are thought to be the dominant degrees of freedom after violent events including some first order phase transitions and inflationary paradigms,  We will describe how these new methods may be used to understand whether quantum corrections cause oscillons to decay so quickly that they are phenomenologically irrelevant.

This event is supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange,  grant no. BPI/STE/2021/1/00034/U/00001