Abelianization of SU(N) Gauge Theory with Gauge Invariant Dynamical Variables and Magnetic Monopoles

TL;DR

This paper reformulates SU(N) gauge theory with adjoint Higgs into a gauge-invariant abelian framework, revealing explicit magnetic monopoles and their quantization conditions, and analyzing the impact of the theta term.

Contribution

It introduces a novel abelianized formulation of SU(N) gauge theory with explicit magnetic monopoles and gauge invariance related to the Higgs field, not the gauge group.

Findings

Magnetic monopoles naturally emerge as Dirac monopoles in the abelianized theory.

Electric and magnetic charges form vectors in root and co-root lattices of SU(N).

The theta term's effects are analyzed within this abelianized framework.

Abstract

It is shown that SU(N) gauge theory coupled to adjoint Higgs can be explicitly re-written in terms of SU(N) gauge invariant dynamical variables with local physical interactions. The resultant theory has a novel compact abelian $U(1)^{(N - 1)}$ gauge invariance. The above abelian gauge invariance is related to the adjoint Higgs field and not to the gauge group SU(N). In this abelianized version the magnetic monopoles carrying the magnetic charges of $(N-1)$ types have a natural origin and therefore appear explicitly in the partition function as Dirac monopoles along with their strings. The gauge invariant electric and magnetic charges with respect to $U(1)^{(N-1)}$ gauge groups are shown to be vectors in root and co-root lattices of SU(N) respectively. Therefore, the Dirac quantization condition corresponds to SU(N) Cartan matrix elements being integers. We also study the effect of the $\theta$ term in the abelian version of the theory.