Dublin Quantum Field Theory Seminar

                            Synge Lecture Theatre
                    School of Mathematics, Hamilton Building
                             Trinity College Dublin

                                 Time: 4.15 pm


April 29        Burkhard Kleihaus (Dept of Maths Physics, UCD, Dublin)

                Monopole-Antimonopole Pairs in Flat and in Curved Space

Grand unified theories predict the existence of magnetic monopoles,
which arise as regular soliton solutions.
Monopoles and anti-monopoles are
characterized by their topological charge.
Whereas unit charge magnetic monopoles are spherically symmetric,
multimonopoles are only axially symmetric or possess no
rotational symmetry at all.
Additionally, in each topological sector there exists a sequence of
static solutions with higher energies.
The simplest such solution resides in the vacuum sector and corresponds
to a monopole-antimonopole pair (MAP) in equilibrium.

When coupled to gravity, monopoles and MAPs reveal surprising properties.
Whereas there is no attraction between monopoles in flat space,
monopoles can be gravitationally bound.
Furthermore, MAPs can 'lose' their Higgs field
and form excited states with no flat space limit.
When gravity becomes too strong, monopoles collaps to form black holes.
Tiny black holes inside monopoles represent counterexamples to the
``no-hair'' conjecture for black holes.
MAPs interacting with a black hole situated midway between the monopole and
anti-monopole give rise to a deformed static black hole horizon.

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Last changed 4 April 2002.