Simulating the symmetron: domain walls and symmetry-restoring impurities

In this paper we study the dynamics of relativistic domain walls in the presence of static symmetry-restoring impurities. The field theory is precisely the same as what is known to cosmologists as the “symmetron model”, whereby the usual ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ symmetry breaking potential is appended with a space-varying mass-term (the space-variation is set by the profile of the impurity, which we take to be a “tanh”-function). After presenting the outcomes of a suite of different numerical experiments we have three main results: (1) domain walls pin to impurities, (2) domain wall necklaces can be energetically preferred configurations, and (3) impurities significantly modifies the usual $N_{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{w}}\propto t^{-1}$ scaling law for random networks of domain walls.