Stabilizing Textures in 3+1 Dimensions with Semilocality

Abstract

It is shown that textures in 3+1 dimensions can be stabilized by partial gauging (semilocality) of the vacuum manifold such that topological unwinding by a gauge transformation is not possible. This introduction of gauge fields can be used to evade Derrick's theorem without higher powers of derivatives and prevent the usual collapse of textures by the effective `pressure' terms induced by the gauge fields. A virial theorem is derived and shown to be a manifestation of the stability of the configuration towards collapse.