Abelian decomposition of SO(2N) Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

Faddeev and Niemi have proposed a decomposition of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory in terms of new variables, appropriate for describing the theory in the infrared limit. We extend this method to SO(2N) Yang-Mills theory. We find that the SO(2N) connection decomposes according to irreducible representations of SO(N). The low energy limit of the decomposed theory is expected to describe soliton-like configurations with nontrivial topological numbers. How the method of decomposition generalizes for $SO(2N+1)$ Yang-Mills theory is also discussed.