Collisions of weakly-bound kinks in the Christ-Lee model

Abstract We investigate soliton collisions in a one-parameter family of scalar field theories in 1+1 dimensions which was first discussed by Christ and Lee [1]. The models have a sextic potential with three local minima, and for suitably small values of the parameter their kinks have an internal structure in the form of two weakly-bound subkinks. We show that for these values of the parameter kink collisions are best understood as an independent sequence of collisions of these subkinks, and that a static mode analysis is not enough to explain resonant structures emerging in this model. We also emphasise the role of radiation and oscillon formation in the collision process.