Manton has made contributions to the theory of
soliton-like particles in two and three dimensions. He calculated the forces between static and moving
monopoles and vortices in
gauge theories, leading to the geometrical idea of
moduli space dynamics. This has been applied to the
classical,
quantum and
statistical mechanics of solitons. He has also developed the theory of
skyrmions as a soliton model of
atomic nuclei. He discovered the unstable
sphaleron solution in the
electroweak sector of the
Standard Model of
particle physics. The
Higgs field is topologically
twisted within a sphaleron. The sphaleron defines an energy scale for
baryon and
lepton number violation in the early universe — an energy scale within the range of the
Large Hadron Collider. His other work includes the construction of
type I supergravity, a 10-dimensional
supergravity theory with
Yang–Mills fields, which is also a low-energy limit of
superstring theory. == Awards and honours ==