Continuous families of Z(2) monopoles in SU(4) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory

TL;DR

This paper explores continuous families of Z(2) monopoles in an SU(4) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory, revealing new classes of embeddings that extend known discrete families, with implications for gauge theory topological structures.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of continuous families of Z(2) monopoles in SU(4) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory, generalizing previous discrete classifications and identifying new embedding classes.

Findings

Z(2) monopoles form continuous families with up to four parameters

New classes of embeddings extend known discrete monopole families

Results generalize previous monopole classifications in gauge theories

Abstract

We consider an SU(4) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory spontaneously broken to $SO(4)$ by a scalar field in the $n\times n$ representation and the unbroken algebra invariant under Cartan automorphism. We obtain that $\mathbb Z_2$ monopoles in this theory belong to different classes of $su(2)$ embeddings associated to continuous families of up to four parameters. This result generalizes the discrete families of $\mathbb Z_2$ monopoles previously known as well as it shows new classes of embeddings.