Soliton Stability in a Generalized Sine-Gordon Potential

We study stability of a generalized sine-Gordon model with two coupled scalar fields in two dimensions. Topological soliton solutions are found from the first-order equations that solve the equations of motion. The perturbation equations can be cast in terms of a Schrodinger-like operators for fluctuations and their spectra are calculated

Why anthropic reasoning cannot predict Lambda

We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an explicit example, we show that weighting different universes by the total number of possible observations leads to an extremely small probability for observing a value of Lambda equal to or greater than what we now measure. We conclude that anthropic reasoning within the framework of probability as frequency is ill-defined and that in the absence of a fundamental motivation for selecting one weighting scheme over another the anthropic principle cannot be used to explain the value of Lambda, nor, likely, any other physical parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. Discussion slighlty expanded, refs added, conclusions unchanged. Matches published versio