A symmetry breaking mechanism for selecting the speed of relativistic solitons

We propose a mechanism for fixing the velocity of relativistic solitons based on the breaking of the Lorentz symmetry of the sine-Gordon (SG) model. The proposal is first elaborated for a molecular chain model as the simple pendulum limit of a double pendulums chain. It is then generalized to a full class of twodimensional field theories of the sine-Gordon type. From a phenomenological point of view, the mechanism allows one to select the speed of a SG soliton just by tuning elastic couplings constants and kinematical parameters. From a fundamental, field-theoretical point of view we show that the characterizing features of relativistic SG solitons (existence of conserved topological charges and stability) may be still preserved even if the Lorentz symmetry is broken and a soliton of a given speed is selected.