On Metastable Branes and a New Type of Magnetic Monopole

TL;DR

This paper explores the existence of regular magnetic monopole solutions in string compactifications with D-branes, highlighting their properties, stability, and potential mass ranges, including implications for Standard Model-like theories.

Contribution

It introduces a new class of magnetic monopoles arising from metastable brane configurations in string theory, independent of non-abelian gauge symmetry breaking.

Findings

Monopoles exist on metastable brane setups like anti-D3 and D5-branes.

They can carry magnetic hypercharge similar to Standard Model particles.

Masses range from string scale to multi-TeV, with potential phenomenological relevance.

Abstract

String compactifications with D-branes may exhibit regular magnetic monopole solutions, whose presence does not rely on broken non-abelian gauge symmetry. These stringy monopoles exist on interesting metastable brane configurations, such as anti-D3 branes inside a flux compactification or D5-branes wrapping 2-cycles that are locally stable but globally trivial. In brane realizations of SM-like gauge theories, the monopoles carry one unit of magnetic hypercharge. Their mass can range from the string scale down to the multi-TeV regime.