Charges and Electromagnetic radiation as topological excitations

TL;DR

This paper presents a model with stable topological solitons in Minkowski space, where charges and spin are topologically characterized, and explores the implications of vacuum degeneracy for massless excitations akin to photons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel topological soliton model with three degrees of freedom, linking topological quantum numbers to electric charge and spin, and discusses vacuum degeneracy effects.

Findings

Identification of four types of solitons with distinct topological quantum numbers.

Existence of massless excitations related to vacuum degeneracy.

Potential physical interpretation of topological quantum numbers as photon-like excitations.

Abstract

We discuss a model with stable topological solitons in Minkowski space with only three degrees of freedom, the rotational angles of a spatial Dreibein. This model has four types of solitons differing in two topological quantum numbers which we identify with electric charge and spin. The vacuum has a two-dimensional degeneracy leading to two types of massless excitations, characterised by a topological quantum number which could have a physical equivalent in the photon number.