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Q-balls across dimensions

Dusty Aiello* and Julian Heeck†

  • *Contact author: cty5qj@virginia.edu
  • †Contact author: heeck@virginia.edu

Phys. Rev. D 114, 015008 – Published 7 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/p6lg-skpb

Abstract

Scalars carrying a conserved global charge Q can form stable localized field configurations composed of a large number of particles. These nontopological solitons are spherically symmetric and are called Q-balls. While usually analyzed in three spatial dimensions, these solitons can be straightforwardly generalized to d spatial dimensions. For d=1, we can analytically solve the nonlinear differential equation for an important class of single-field potentials; for d>1, we can analytically approximate the solutions in the thin-wall or large Q-ball regime, including the first subleading correction consistently. Since the underlying differential equations have the same form as vacuum-decay bounce solutions, our results find applications there, too.

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