’t Hooft–Polyakov Monopole and Instanton-like Topological Solution in Gauge-Higgs Unification

Abstract

We consider 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole (TPM) as a topological soliton in the 5-dimensional (5D) theory of gauge-Higgs unification. This scenario provides a very natural framework to incorporate the TPM, since the adjoint scalar is builtin as the extra-space component of higher dimensional gauge field. In the process of the analysis, we realize that the condition to be satisfied by the Bogomolny-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) state of TPM, the BPS monopole, is equivalent to an (anti-)self-dual condition for the higher dimensional gauge field. This observation, in turn, suggests the presence of instanton-like topological soliton living in the 4D space (including the extra dimension), instead of the 4D space-time in the case of ordinary instanton, say "space-like instanton" with finite energy, instead of finite action. We construct the field configuration for the space-like instanton and calculate its mass, handled by the compactification scale. Next we discuss the BPS monopole, as an anti-self-dual gauge field. We start by constructing a hedgehog-type solution as what is obtained by a local gauge transformation from a trivial vacuum. We also argue in some detail that the relation between these two types of topological solitons becomes manifest through the unified description by use of the ansatz adopted by 't Hooft.