A virial approach to soliton-like solutions of coupled non-linear differential equations including the ’t-Hooft-Polyakov monopole equations

Abstract

A virial theorem for solitons derived by Friedberg, Lee and Sirlin is used to reduce a system of second order equations to an equivalent first order set. It is shown that this theorem, when used in conjunction with our earlier observation that soliton-like solutions lie on the separatrix, helps in obtaining soliton-like solutions of theories involving coupled fields. The method is applied to a system of equations studied extensively by Rajaraman. The ’t-Hooft-Polyakov monopole equations are then studied and we obtain the well-known monopole solutions in the Prasad-Sommerfeld limit (λ=0); for the case λ≠0, we succeed in obtaining a non-trivial algebraic constraint between the fields of the theory.