STATISTICS OF 2D SOLITONS

Abstract

We study the inequivalent quantizations of (1 + 1)-dimensional nonlinear sigma models with space manifold S1 and target manifold X. If X is multiply connected, these models possess topological solitons. After providing a definition of "spin" and "statistics" for these solitons and demonstrating a spin-statistics correlation, we give various exmples where the solitons can have exotic statistics. In some of these models, the solitons may obey a generalized version of fractional statistics called ambistatistics. The relevance of these 2D models to the statistics of vortices in (2 + 1)-dimensional spontaneously broken gauge theories is also discussed. We close with a discussion concerning the extension of our results to higher dimensions.