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

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.