Magnetic Monopoles in the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs System

Abstract

We study the Yang-Mills-Higgs system within the framework of general relativity. In the static situation, using Bogomol'nyi type analysis, we derive a positive-definite energy functional which has a lower bound. Specializing to the gauge group $SU(2)$ and the t'Hooft-Polyakov ansatz for the gauge and Higgs fields, we seek static, spherically symmetric solutions to the coupled system of equations in both the isotropic and standard coordinate systems. In both cases, in the spontaneously broken symmetry situation, we find great simplications reducing the solutions of the coupled system to the solution of a single non-linear differential equation, different one in each case, but well-known in other contexts of physics. We find abelian and non-abelian monopole solutions with gravitational fields playing the role of Higgs fields in providing attraction that balances the repulsion due to the gauge fields. Numerical solutions indicate the possibility of blackhole horizons inside the monopoles enclosing the singularity at the origin. Such non-abelian monopoles are then the analogs of Reissner-Nordström blackholes with magnetic charge.