Selfgravitating Yang-Mills solitons and their Chern-Simons numbers

Abstract

We present a classification of the possible regular, spherically symmetric solutions of the Einstein-Yang-Mills system which is based on a bundle theoretical analysis for arbitrary gauge groups. It is shown that such solitons must be of magnetic type, at least if the magnetic Yang-Mills charge vanishes. Explicit expressions for the Chern-Simons numbers of these selfgravitating Yang-Mills solitons are derived, which involve only properties of irreducible root systems and some information about the asymptotics of the solutions. It turns out, as an example, that the Chern-Simons numbers are always half-integers or integers for the gauge groups $SU(n)$. Possible physical implications of these results, which are based on analogies with the unstable sphaleron solution of the electroweak theory, are briefly indicated.