CHARACTERISTICS OF UNWINDING TEXTURES

The evolution of initially random texture field configurations is considered, without recourse to the nonlinear sigma-model approximation. Numerical simulations yield a set of texture unwinding events, which can be characterized by their topological charge and a new quantity we call the fractional manifold covering. This accounts for the possibility that a generic texture configuration can wind several times over some sections of the vacuum manifold while leaving others uncovered. We find unwindings with fractional manifold coverings in the range 0.56 less-than-or-equal-to C+/- less-than-or-equal-to 0.98. In good agreement with our earlier conclusions regarding singly wound spherically symmetric configurations, we find that there is a maximum likelihood, or characteristic, covering associated with the unwinding of these random configurations. In Minkowski space, this characteristic covering and the dispersion around it are found to be C(c)+/- = 0.81 +/- 0.10, while the characteristic topological charge is 10% larger.