Electroweak monopoles and magnetic dumbbells in grand unified theories


Abstract in English

We use the $SU(5)$ model to show the presence in grand unified theories of an electroweak monopole and a magnetic dumbbell (meson) made up of a monopole-antimonopole pair connected by a $Z$-magnetic flux tube. The monopole is associated with the spontaneous breaking of the weak $SU(2)_L$ gauge symmetry by the induced vacuum expectation value of a heavy scalar $SU(2)_L$ triplet with zero weak hypercharge contained in the adjoint Higgs 24-plet. This monopole carries a Coulomb magnetic charge of $(3/4) (2pi/e)$ as well as $Z$-magnetic charge, where $2pi/e$ denotes the unit Dirac magnetic charge. Its total magnetic charge is $sqrt{3/8}(4pi/e)$, which is in agreement with the Dirac quantization condition. The monopole weighs about 700 GeV, but because of the attached $Z$-magnetic tube it exists, together with the antimonopole, in a magnetic dumbbell configuration whose mass is expected to lie in the TeV range. The presence of these topological structures in $SU(5)$ and $SO(10)$ and in their supersymmetric extensions provides an exciting new avenue for testing these theories in high-energy colliders.

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