Excited Platonic Sphalerons in the Presence of a Dilaton Field

Abstract

We construct sphaleron solutions with discrete symmetries in Yang-Mills-Higgs theory coupled to a dilaton. These platonic sphalerons are related to rational maps of degree N. We demonstrate that, in the presence of a dilaton, for a given rational map excited platonic sphalerons exist beside the fundamental platonic sphalerons. We focus on platonic sphaleron solutions with N=4, which possess cubic symmetry, and construct the two branches of their first excitations. The energy density of these excited platonic sphalerons exhibits a cube within a cube.