Generalizations and UV completions of Cho-Maison monopole

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Cho-Maison monopole configurations are broadly realizable in gauge theories with electroweak-like symmetry breaking and can be embedded into known monopole solutions, with implications for grand unified models.

Contribution

It explicitly constructs Cho-Maison-like monopoles in various models and shows their embedding into 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles, extending their theoretical understanding.

Findings

Cho-Maison monopoles can be constructed in a wide class of models.

The monopole in the Pati-Salam model reduces to the electroweak monopole at low energies.

Cho-Maison monopoles can be embedded into 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles.

Abstract

A monopole configuration in the electroweak theory was constructed by Cho and Maison, allowing for a singular behavior at the origin. Since the essential structure of the Cho-Maison monopole is based on an electroweak-type symmetry breaking, similar monopole configurations are expected to arise more generally in gauge theories containing such a structure. In this paper, we explicitly show that Cho-Maison-like monopole configurations can indeed be constructed in a broad class of models. We also show that the Cho-Maison monopole can be embedded into an 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole as its low-energy effective description. In particular, we find that a monopole in the Pati-Salam model behaves as the electroweak Cho-Maison monopole once degrees of freedom which are heavier than the electroweak scale are integrated out.