Domain wall equations, Hessian of superpotential, and Bogomol'nyi bounds

Abstract An important question concerning the classical solutions of the equations of motion arising in quantum field theories at the BPS critical coupling is whether all finite-energy solutions are necessarily BPS. In this paper we present a study of this basic question in the context of the domain wall equations whose potential is induced from a superpotential so that the ground states are the critical points of the superpotential. We prove that the definiteness of the Hessian of the superpotential suffices to ensure that all finite-energy domain-wall solutions are BPS. We give several examples to show that such a BPS property may fail such that non-BPS solutions exist when the Hessian of the superpotential is indefinite.