Scattering of vortices with excited normal modes

We consider head-on collisions at critical coupling of vortices modeled by the Abelian-Higgs model. We investigate the two-vortex scattering, whereby the vortices are excited by the shape mode causing fluctuations in the gauge-invariant quantities. When the vortices are excited with a sufficiently large amplitude the moduli space approximation fails, and we observe an interesting behavior in which the vortices can become trapped in a quasibound state with multiple bounces. We perform a detailed investigation on the behavior of these excited vortices and sample a phase space of solutions. Interestingly, we find a fractal structure dependent on the initial phase of the mode and velocity of the vortices. Published by the American Physical Society 2024