Lifetime of collective isospin rotations of a quantum meson field

Abstract

We calculate the lifetime of the collective isospin rotating solutions which have been found recently in the case a quantum N-component meson field with exact O(N) symmetry. For this purpose we take into account the small breaking of the O(N) symmetry associated to the non vanishing mass of the pion. This term induces a coupling between collective rotations and intrinsic meson excitations. We evaluate the associated damping time in the framework of linear response theory. We find damping times of the order of 100 fm/c, i.e. substantially longer than reaction times.