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# More on core instabilities of magnetic monopoles

## 1 Introduction

Since the pioneering work of ’t Hooft and Polyakov  magnetic monopoles have been studied in detail in many different models. In this paper we report on the results of investigations following our earlier work  on the core instability of the fundamental spherically symmetric magnetic monopole solution. We determine the regions in parameter space where this instability occurs and present some details of the numerical simulations we performed. In  it was shown that in a rather simple model the spherically magnetic monopole solution is not the global minimal energy solution for all values of the parameters of the model. The fact that the core topology is not fixed by the boundary conditions at infinity and different core topologies can be deformed into each other was already established earlier . As we will indicate, alice theories have a special topological feature which makes it plausible that such a core deformation really can be favored energetically. We will also argue that a core deformation is typically energetically favored in models where the charged Higgs particles are light compared to the neutral Higgs.

This paper is organized as follows. We start with a brief recap of alice electrodynamics (AED) and its features which lead us to expect the core meta-/instability of the monopole. Next we introduce the specific model and discuss in some detail the numerical simulations we performed and present our the main results. We end the paper with conclusions and an outlook.

## 2 Alice electrodynamics

Alice electrodynamics (AED) is a gauge theory with gauge group $`H=U(1)_2O(2)`$, in a certain sense the minimally non-abelian extension of ordinary electrodynamics. The nontrivial $`_2`$ transformation reverses the direction of the electric and magnetic fields and the sign of the charges. In other words, alice electrodynamics is a theory in which charge conjugation symmetry is gauged. However, as this non-abelian extension is discrete, it only affects electrodynamics through certain global (topological) features, such as the appearance of alice fluxes and cheshire charges . In this paper the cheshire phenomenon is of great importance to us as it supports the possible core meta-/instability of the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole solution. The topological structure of $`U(1)_2`$ differs from that of $`U(1)`$ in a few subtle points. AED allows topologically stable localized fluxes since $`\mathrm{\Pi }_0(U(1)_2)=_2`$, the so called alice fluxes. Note that in this theory this flux is coëxisting with the unbroken $`U(1)`$ of electromagnetism and is therefore not an ordinary “magnetic” flux. Just as a $`U(1)`$ gauge theory, AED may contain magnetic monopoles, which follows from the fact that $`\mathrm{\Pi }_1(U(1)_2)=`$. We note however, that due to the fact that the $`_2`$ and the $`U(1)`$ part of the gauge group do not commute, magnetic charges of opposite sign belong to the same topological sector.

It was pointed out long ago that there are interesting issues concerning the core stability of magnetic monopoles. Fixing the asymptotics of the Higgs field, the core (i.e., the zeros of the Higgs field) may have different topologies, notably that of a “ring” rather than the conventional “point”111In fact in AED the Higgs field can typically only be represented by a director field if it is in the vacuum manifold. Thus the Higgs field need not go to zero inside the core of a defect. However for the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole solution the Higgs field does go to zero, but for the alice loop solution it does not.. These core topologies are cobordant, i.e., they can be smoothly deformed into each other and it is a question of energetics what will be the lowest energy monopole state . In AED such a core deformation would be accompanied by the rather unusual delocalized version of (magnetic) charge, the so called magnetic cheshire charge. Cheshire charge is a key feature of AED and is a general phenomena in field theories with (topologically) stable fluxes which are not elements of the center of the unbroken gauge group.

In the specific AED model we consider the Higgs field is a symmetric tensor, whose vacuum expectation value may be depicted as a bidirectional arrow. The head-tail symmetry of the order parameter reflects the charge conjugation symmetry of the theory. In AED we can “punch a hole” in the spherically symmetric monopole and deform it into an alice ring, this configuration is consistent with the continuity requirement on the order parameter because of its head-tail symmetry. In figure 1 we plotted the two different core regions one expects to find for a magnetic monopole in AED. In this paper we determine in what part of the parameter space of the model the monopole is meta-/unstable and where we expect the spherically symmetric monopole to compete with a magnetically, cheshire charged alice ring. Figure 1(a) represents the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole and figure 1(b) represents the magnetically cheshire charge alice ring. The fact that the core of the defect can really deform into a torus is due to the head-tail symmetry of the Higgs field in the broken phase. We note that Higgs field only rotates over an angle $`\pi `$ when going around a single flux. This is the hallmark for an alice flux, so the core deformed spherical monopole is in fact an alice ring carrying a magnetic cheshire charge, see also .

We just showed that the punctured monopole is a magnetically cheshire charged alice loop. To understand that such a configuration can indeed be stable we make an estimate for the energy of such a charged alice loop. We approximate the energy of the circular alice loop of radius $`R`$, by $`E_{loop}=2\pi R_{flux}`$, with $`_{flux}`$ the energy per unit length of the alice flux, and approximate the energy of the cheshire charge, $`E_{ches}`$, by a uniformly charged disc with radius $`R`$. The magnetic field of the latter is given by:

$`\stackrel{}{B}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Q}{\pi R^2}}\stackrel{}{}{\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{r^{}dr^{}d\theta ^{}}{\sqrt{r^2+z^2+r^22rr^{}\mathrm{cos}\theta ^{}}}}`$ (1)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Q}{R^2}}\stackrel{}{a}(r,z)`$ (2)
Where we have rescaled the coordinates by a factor of $`R`$ and $`Q`$ is the total charge. The field energy is then given by:

$`E_{ches}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \stackrel{}{B}\stackrel{}{B}R^3d^3x}`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{R}}{\displaystyle \stackrel{}{a}(r,z)\stackrel{}{a}(r,z)d^3x}`$ (4)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{R}}A`$ (5)
Where $`A`$ is a dimensionless constant determined by the disc geometry. The total energy of the alice loop of radius $`R`$, with a cheshire charge $`Q`$ is thus given by:

$$E_{tot}=2\pi R_{flux}+\frac{Q^2}{R}A$$
(6)
As mentioned earlier there are two competing, R-dependent, terms and we may determine the radius of the loop which minimizes the energy, yielding:

$$R=|Q|\sqrt{\frac{A}{2\pi _{flux}}}$$
(7)
Consequently the minimal energy is given by:

$$E=\sqrt{8\pi _{flux}A}|Q|$$
(8)
Obviously this estimate can only be trusted if the radius of the alice loop is much larger than the radius of the alice flux and this should be checked. However this estimate does indicate that the cheshire charged alice loop can be a stable configuration, where the string tension is balanced by the repulsion between the magnetic fieldlines. Interestingly enough this estimate gives an energy proportional to the magnetic charge, $`E|Q|`$.

## 3 The model

To answer stability questions related to the spherically symmetric monopole configuration (or the cheshire charged alice ring) we consider an explicit model. We use the original tensor alice model , but we could as well have chosen an alternative . We will in fact argue that the results obtained are quite general and model independent. For completeness and notational convenience we briefly summarize the model. The action is given by:

$$S=d^4x\left\{\frac{1}{4}F^{a,\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }^a+\frac{1}{4}Tr(D^\mu \mathrm{\Phi }D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi })V(\mathrm{\Phi })\right\},$$
(9)
where the Higgs field $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }^{ab}`$ is a real, symmetric, traceless $`3\times 3`$ matrix, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is in the five dimensional representation of $`SO(3)`$ and $`D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }=_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }ie[A_\mu ,\mathrm{\Phi }]`$, with $`A_\mu =A_\mu ^aT_a`$, where $`T_a`$ are the generators of $`SO(3)`$. The most general renormalizeable potential is given by :

$$V=\frac{1}{2}\mu ^2Tr\left(\mathrm{\Phi }^2\right)\frac{1}{3}\gamma Tr\left(\mathrm{\Phi }^3\right)+\frac{1}{4}\lambda \left(Tr\left(\mathrm{\Phi }^2\right)\right)^2,$$
(10)
with the parameter $`\gamma >0`$, since $`(\mathrm{\Phi },\gamma )=(\mathrm{\Phi },\gamma )`$. For a suitable range of the parameters in the potential, the gauge symmetry of the model will be broken to the symmetry of AED. In the “unitary” gauge, where the Higgs field is diagonal, the ground state is (up to permutations) given by the following matrix:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_0=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}f& 0& 0\\ 0& f& 0\\ 0& 0& 2f\end{array}\right),$$
(11)
with $`f=\frac{\gamma }{12\lambda }\left(1+\sqrt{1+\frac{24\mu ^2\lambda }{\gamma ^2}}\right)`$.

The full action has four parameters, $`e,\mu ^2,\gamma ,\lambda `$, this number can be reduced to two dimensionless parameters by appropriate rescalings of the variables. A physical choice for these dimensionless parameters is to take the ratio’s of the masses that one finds from perturbing around the homogeneous minimum. To determine these, we write the action in the unitary gauge where the massless components of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ have been absorbed by the gauge fields. The physical components of the Higgs field may be expanded as:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(x^\mu )=\mathrm{\Phi }_0+\sqrt{2}\varphi _1(x^\mu )E_1+\sqrt{2}\varphi _2(x^\mu )R_3(a(x^\mu ))E_2R_3(a(x^\mu ))^T,$$
(12)
with:

$$E_1=\frac{1}{\sqrt{6}}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 2\end{array}\right);E_2=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right);E_3=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& 0& 1\\ 0& 0& 0\\ 1& 0& 0\end{array}\right)$$
(13)
and $`R_i`$ are the usual rotation matrices. To second order, the potential $`V(\mathrm{\Phi })`$ takes the following form222It is most convenient to use $`\varphi _2`$ for the combination $`\varphi _2e^{ia}`$, since these two Higgs modes, $`\varphi _2`$ and $`a`$, combine to form one complex charged field, from now on called $`\varphi _2`$.:

$$V(\mathrm{\Phi })=const.+(2\mu ^2+\gamma f)\varphi _1^2+3\gamma f|\varphi _2|^2+\mathrm{},$$
(14)
yielding the two distinct masses of the Higgs modes. Next we look at the ’kinetic’ term, $`\frac{1}{4}Tr(D^\mu \mathrm{\Phi }D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi })`$, of the Higgs field. Inserting the previous expressions for the Higgs field, we find:

$$\frac{1}{4}Tr(D^\mu \mathrm{\Phi }D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi })=\frac{1}{2}(_\mu \varphi _1)^2+\frac{1}{2}\left|D_\mu ^3\varphi _2\right|^2+\frac{9}{2}e^2f^2\left[\left(A_\mu ^1\right)^2+\left(A_\mu ^2\right)^2\right]+\mathrm{},$$
(15)
with: $`D_\mu ^3=_\mu i2eA_\mu ^3`$. The second term shows that the $`\varphi _2`$ component of the Higgs field carries a charge $`2e`$ with respect to the unbroken $`U(1)`$ component $`A_\mu ^3`$ of the gauge field. The first term describes the usual charge neutral Higgs particle and the third term yields the mass of the charged gauge fields. So the relevant lowest order action is given by:

$`S={\displaystyle }d^4x\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F_{\mu \nu }^aF^{a,\mu \nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_\mu \varphi _1)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|D_\mu ^3\varphi _2|^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_1^2\varphi _1^2`$ (16)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_2^2|\varphi _2|^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_A^2[\left(A_\mu ^1\right)^2+\left(A_\mu ^2\right)^2]+\mathrm{}\},`$
with $`m_1^2=4\mu ^2+2\gamma f`$, $`m_2^2=6\gamma f`$ and $`m_A^2=9e^2f^2`$.

Two degrees of freedom of the five dimensional Higgs field are ’eaten’ by the broken gauge fields, one degree of freedom forms the real neutral scalar field and two degrees of freedom form the complex (doubly charged) scalar field. To specify a point in the classical parameter space we may, up to irrelevant rescalings, use the dimensionless mass ratio’s $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ and $`\frac{m_A}{m_2}`$. We note that the value of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ needs to be larger or equal to $`\frac{1}{3}`$, because for smaller values of $`\frac{1}{3}`$ the groundstate corresponds to the symmetric unbroken vacuum. Note that we found three mass scales in this problem. For the simulations, which we will describe in the next section, this means that we will we have to deal with three different length scales.

## 4 Numerical simulations

In this section we will describe in some detail the numerical simulations we performed to determine the instability and the meta-stability regions for the spherically symmetric monopole, in the parameter space of the model. First though, we introduce the ansatz. We end the section with the discussion of a typical set of numerical experiments.

### 4.1 The variational ansatz

As mentioned before we will use a variational approach. In such an approach the configurations one finds are typically not exact solutions to the equations of motion. However as the ansatz we will use contains the ansatz for the exact spherically symmetric solution we may still study the instability and the meta-stability of this solution. This means that the instability and the meta-stability regions we will find for the monopole, are lower bounds, in the sense that those instability regions can only become larger as the ansatz becomes less restrictive.

As we expect the competing configuration of the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole to be the magnetically cheshire charged alice ring, we base our ansatz on cylindrical symmetry, also see . The ansatz we will use also has a reflection symmetry with respect to the $`z`$$`=`$$`0`$-plane. We impose this reflection symmetry to eliminate the (almost) zero mode in the energy due to the position of the defect along the $`z`$-axis. The ansatz for the Higgs field is:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(z,\rho ,\theta =0)=\varphi _1(z,\rho )E_1+\varphi _2(z,\rho )E_2+\varphi _3(z,\rho )E_3$$
(17)
and

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(z,\rho ,\theta )=R_3(\theta )\mathrm{\Phi }(z,\rho ,\theta =0)R_3(\theta )^T.$$
(18)
The ansatz for the gauge fields is simply given by $`eA_i^j=ϵ_{ijk}\frac{x^k}{x^2}A(z,\rho )`$, very similar to the one for the spherically symmetric monopole , except that we allow $`A(z,\rho )`$ to depend on $`\rho `$ and $`z`$ and not only on $`r=\sqrt{\rho ^2+z^2}`$. The boundary conditions for $`r\mathrm{}`$ are the boundary conditions of the spherically symmetric monopole , i.e., $`A(z,\rho )`$ goes to one and the Higgs field to $`\mathrm{\Phi }(z,\rho ,\theta )=R_3(\theta )R_2\left(\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{z}{r}\right)\right)\mathrm{\Phi }_0R_2\left(\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{z}{r}\right)\right)^TR_3(\theta )^T`$. The boundary conditions at $`\rho =0`$ and $`z=0`$ follow by imposing the cylindrical and reflection symmetry and are given in the table below:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}& & \\ & \rho =0& z=0\\ & & \\ \varphi _1& _\rho \varphi _1=0& _z\varphi _1=0\\ \varphi _2& _\rho \varphi _2=\varphi _2=0& _z\varphi _2=0\\ \varphi _3& \varphi _3=0& \varphi _3=0\\ A& _\rho A=0& _zA=0\end{array}$$

It is easy to see that these boundary conditions are also met by the spherically symmetric monopole, so it is indeed contained in our more general ansatz. With the help of this model and ansatz we study the stability of the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole. Before we present the results we describe the numerical methods we employ, and a typical set of experiments.

### 4.2 Some numerical details

We mentioned in section 3 that the AED model has three mass scales, i.e., three relevant length scales. However we examine a region of parameter space in which only two of those are relevant. That is the core geometry of the defect and the region where the Higgs field is not in the vacuum manifold on the one hand, and the inverse mass of the gauge fields - which is typically much larger - on the other. To be able to adequately capture both scales we use a space and configuration dependent lattice spacing. In fact we will use two types of lattices. In figure 2 we schematically give the step sizes as a function of the point number (in one dimension). The two dimensional lattices we will use have the same type of lattice in both directions.

The only difference between the two lattices is that in the second, figure 2(b), there are extra lattice points near $`r=0`$ and $`z=0`$ and thus it has a more lattice points. However the same part of space is covered by both lattices. Although the difference between the two lattices is quite small we will encounter a specific lattice dependence, which turns out it be an artifact, but nevertheless will be of use later on.

To obtain the minima of the energy within the ansatz for the different values of the parameters of the model, we used a Monte Carlo based cooling method. In this method one introduces a temperature and gives a configuration with energy $`E`$ a weight factor equal to $`e^{\frac{E}{T}}`$. In the limit of $`T0`$ only the configuration with the lowest energy survives. Assuming there are no flat directions this procedure selects an unique configuration. With the help of a Monte Carlo mechanism different configurations are sampled. We keep sampling at a specific temperature as long as the energy of the system averaged over a preset number of sweeps333In one sweep all variables undergo one Monte Carlo step, i.e., are allowed to change once. (typically 10) decreases and do this a minimal number of times (typically 3). When this average energy no longer decreases we lower the temperature (typically by 10%) and repeat the process until the total energy drop at a specific temperature becomes lower then a predetermined relative energy change (typically $`10^6`$%). During this process we keep the acceptance rate of the Monte Carlo steps locally fixed for all fields. This means that we introduced a maximum step size for each field at each position and automatically adjust it to get the preferred acceptance rate. Since the change due to temperature change is easy captured we determined the desired maximum step sizes in the beginning of the cooling mechanism and further only correct for the trivial temperature changes, i.e., as $`T`$ changes in $`aT`$, $`\delta _{field}`$ changes in $`\sqrt{a}\delta _{field}`$. This assumes that the energy change depends quadratically on the field change which is what one naively expects near a stable configuration, and indeed, that criterion worked nicely.

The procedure we just described is used to determine stable configurations within our ansatz for the different values of the parameters of the model. To be able to determine the meta-stability and instability regions of the monopole in the parameter space of the model we perform hysteresis type of experiments. This means that we determine the lowest energy configuration for a specific point in the parameter space and use this configuration as the starting point for the determination of a stable configuration at a point nearby in the parameter space. As the change in the parameter space is only small one would expect the new configuration also to be close to the previous one. We determine the new configuration again with the help of the cooling method444The temperature at which the secondary cooling process starts is smaller than the starting temperature of the initial cooling process. This starting temperature of the secondary cooling processes determines the energy barriers which can be overcome. Only in the limit where this temperature goes to zero can one really claim that a configuration becomes unstable. However for finite temperature one can still show the instability under small, but finite, perturbations. This is what we mean if we claim to find an instability of a specific type of configuration.. We repeat this process and move along a trajectory in the parameter space and back again. We choose these paths such that the lowest energy configurations on each end of the trajectory are different type of configurations: a spherical monopole and a cheshire charged alice ring. To keep things numerically simple we keep the mass of the gauge fields constant during a hysteresis experiment. This restriction selects specific trajectories in the two dimensional parameter space, which are given by:

$$\frac{m_A}{m_2}=\frac{2\left(\frac{m_A}{m_2}\right)_{\frac{1}{3}}}{3\sqrt{\frac{1}{3}+\left(\frac{m_1}{m_2}\right)^2}},$$
(19)
with $`\left(\frac{m_A}{m_2}\right)_{\frac{1}{3}}`$ the value of $`\frac{m_A}{m_2}`$ at the minimal value of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}=\frac{1}{3}`$.
This restriction allows us to keep the total space covered by the same lattice throughout the hysteresis. In a single hysteresis experiment the size of the core does not change much, so we keep the lattice fixed throughout a single hysteresis experiment.

Figures 3(a) and (b) show the typical hysteresis results. The figures show the values of the field variable $`\frac{\varphi _1}{\sqrt{6}f}`$ at $`r=z=0`$. This variable is a normalized order parameter in the sense that its value equals zero for the spherical monopole, and one for the alice ring. A negative value of the order parameter is also possible and corresponds to a new type of configuration, the so called split core, see figure 4(c) and also . Figure 3(b) shows what one would expect for a hysteresis type of experiment for a lattice of type (b) while figure 3(a) shows a different behavior and corresponds to a lattice of type (a).

In figure 3(a) the split core configuration appears and although this configuration typically has more energy then a cheshire charged alice ring configuration, it does appear to be meta-stable. In  this object was discussed for the global analog of AED, a nematic liquid crystal theory, and it was argued that this configuration is due to the cylindrical symmetry restriction of the ansatz used to explore the solution-space. Here we found that it might as well be just a lattice artifact as it depends on the lattice type one uses in the hysteresis experiments. Although this splitcore configuration may be viewed as an undesirable feature caused by lattice and/or symmetry artifacts, we will see that it can be turned into a useful tool.

### 4.3 A typical set of experiments

As mentioned before we do hysteresis type of experiments along specific trajectories in the parameter space of the model. Next we look at a typical set of such experiments. We did the hysteresis experiment for three different numbers of lattice points, where we only changed the number of lattice points describing the core of the configuration. One could of course also change the number of points outside the core but we found that that did not make any difference in the observables we examined and did not affect the stability of the configurations. We performed numerical simulations with 25$`\times `$25 (27$`\times `$27), 50$`\times `$50 (54$`\times `$54) and 100$`\times `$100 (108$`\times `$108) lattice points describing the core structure for each line in the parameter space we considered. The figures 5(a-d) are the typical results of such an investigation. The figures show two different observables: the relative energy difference of the two branches of the hysteresis, and the quantity $`\frac{\varphi _1(0,0)}{\sqrt{6}f}`$. The figures 5(a) and 5(b) belong to lattices of type (a) and the figures 5(c) and 5(d) belong to lattices of type (b). All figures show the results obtained with the three different number of lattices points, with the lines A, B an C corresponding to 25$`\times `$25 (27$`\times `$27), 50$`\times `$50 (54$`\times `$54) and 100$`\times `$100 (108$`\times `$108) points describing the core structure respectively.

Let us first compare the figures 5(a) and 5(c). These figures show the values of $`\frac{\varphi _1(0,0)}{\sqrt{6}f}`$. In both figures we see that qualitatively the lines A, B and C do not differ very much, but quantitatively they do. The steep part of the lines corresponds to the local instability of the cheshire charged alice ring and the spherical monopole. In both figures 5(a) and 5(c) we see that the alice ring becomes locally unstable with respect to the monopole for low enough values of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$. In figure 5(c) we see that for large enough values of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ the monopole becomes unstable with respect to the alice ring, whereas in figure 5(a) we see that the monopole slowly transforms into a split core configuration, see figure 4(c), and does not become locally unstable with respect to the alice ring. In figure 5(b) we do see that this splitcore configuration is globally unstable with respect to the alice ring configuration as it costs more energy.

Now let us examine and compare the figures 5(b) and 5(d). First we note that the relative energy differences are very small, being of the order of pro-mils. This is one of the reasons why the minimal relative energy difference step in the cooling mechanism is chosen so small, of the order of $`10^5`$ pro-mil. In the regions where both branches of the hysteresis give the same configuration, see figures 5(a) and 5(c), the relative energy difference is equal to zero on the scale of the figures 5(b) and 5(d). The other segment of the curves is the interesting part, in figure 5(b) and 5(d). The point where this segment of the curves goes to zero is the point where the spherically magnetic monopole solution is no longer the lowest energy configuration within our ansatz, i.e., it is the point where the monopole becomes globally unstable. As we use more lattice points to probe this meta-stability this point moves only very slightly. Typically one should extrapolate the results to infinitely many points, but here we can use a different approach. We will exploit the results of the two different types of lattice. In the limit of infinitely many lattice points both lattice types will move to the same point. However in the figure 5(b) we see that this point in approached from the right while in figure 5(d) it is approached from the left555We observed this feature for all the trajectories through parameter space we considered. when increasing the number of lattice points. Obviously this helps us to determine the position of the point where the monopole becomes globally unstable, as well as the error in the position of the point. So we may turn the lattice dependence into a useful tool to determine the global stability of the spherically symmetric monopole solution.

For most trajectories through the parameter space the same feature can be used to determine the point where the alice ring configuration becomes locally unstable with respect to the monopole. However this point is not as interesting, since the alice ring configuration is not necessarily an exact solution to the equations of motion. Both lattice types also show a local instability of the spherically symmetric monopole solution. In figure 5(c) this happens at a clear point, but from figure 5(a) where the monopole changes into a splitcore configuration, it is a bit harder to fix the point where this happens as it appears to be a continuous process. Although the position of this point is unclear, from figure 5(a), it is at least clear that this point moves in the same direction for both types of lattices as follows from figures 5(a) and 5(c).

With the help of the results of both types of lattice we determine the global instability point of the spherically symmetric monopole solution and local instability point of alice ring configuration. To determine the monopole instability point we only use the results from the lattices of type (b) as they clearly show the point where the monopole solution becomes locally unstable.

## 5 The meta-/instability results

Let us now turn to results of our investigations. First we describe how we extracted the results from the hysteresis type of experiments. There are two important results. In the first place, there is the line bounding the region in parameter space where the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole solution is no longer the lowest energy configuration. Crossing that line the solution only becomes meta-stable. Although our variational method does not prove that the configuration which has the lowest energy is a cheshire charged alice ring solution, in that case it actually does imply it, as we find that a cheshire charged alice ring configuration exists for those parameter values. In the second place there is the other line bounding the region where the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole solution is no longer a locally stable solution. Finally we also determined the line at which the alice ring configuration becomes locally unstable, but as explained before, this line is of least interest as the alice ring configuration (with our ansatz) is typically not a solution to the equations of motion of the model.

In figure 6(a-c) we give the results for the meta-stability and instability lines. Figure 6(c) shows the meta-stability line for the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole solution. As we showed in section 4.3 we can use both lattice types to determine the monopole meta-stability line as both lattice types move to this line from a different side as the number of lattice points increase. We determined the monopole meta-stability line up to the distance between the two monopole meta-stability lines determined from the data of both lattice types at the maximal number of lattice points we used. The plot shows the lines on which we did the hysteresis type of experiments, the two monopole meta-stability lines determined by the different lattice types and a shaded region which is to represent the error in the position of the monopole meta-stability line. Thus we did not extrapolate the results from both types of lattices to an infinite number of lattice points we just used the results from the lattices with the most lattice points to corner the meta-stability line, see figure 6(c). This line shows that the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole is not always the lowest energy solution and cuts the parameter space into two regions.

To determine the position of the instability line of the spherically magnetic monopole solution, see figure 6(b), we just use the results from the type (b) lattices as these show a clear point where the monopole becomes unstable. This does mean we have to extrapolate our results to a lattice with an infinite number of points. For all lines in the parameter space we investigated we observed that the change of the position, projected on the $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$-axis, of this point from the 27$`\times `$27 to the 54$`\times `$54 lattice is about twice as big as the change in the position from the 54$`\times `$54 to the 108$`\times `$108 lattice. We estimate the position of the monopole instability point by extrapolating this behavior to a lattice of an infinite number of lattice points. This means that the estimated position of the instability point lies at the same distance from the 108$`\times `$108-point as the 54$`\times `$54-point only on the other side. The error we estimate as twice this distance. In figure 6(b) we plotted these results. We plotted the lines on which we did the hysteresis experiments. The shaded region is to represent the error in the position of the monopole instability line and we plotted the instability line obtained from the data of the 108$`\times `$108 lattices. The estimate of the instability line itself is not plotted but is right in the middle of the shaded region.

In figure 6(a) we plotted the instability line of the alice ring configuration. For most of the lines through the parameter space we used the same technique as for the monopole meta-stability line, for the rest we used the same principle as we used for the monopole instability line.

Again we note that due to the fact that we used a variational approach the monopole meta-stability and instability lines are upper bounds in the sense that if less restrictions are forced upon the configurations these lines can only move to the left, i.e., in favor of the cheshire charged alice ring.

It is quite easy to understand why the alice ring is the lowest energy configuration in the limit of large values of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ and the monopole is the lowest energy solution in the limit of small $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$. The two masses $`m_1`$ and $`m_2`$ correspond to energy costs in deviations of the Higgs field from the vacuum manifold. Deviations pure in the ’length’ of the Higgs field correspond to $`m_1`$. While deviations in the non-uniaxial direction correspond to $`m_2`$. In the limit of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}0`$666Note that this limit can in fact not be taken as the minimum value of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ at which the broken vacuum is still the true vacuum is equal to $`\frac{1}{3}`$. For smaller values of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ the unbroken vacuum is the true vacuum. We come back to this point in the conclusions and outlook section. the non-uniaxial deviations are suppressed and the spherically symmetric (uniaxial) magnetic monopole is the lowest energy solution. In the limit of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}\mathrm{}`$ one would expect an ’escape’ in the non-uniaxial direction. This signals the meta-stability of the monopole and implies that the cheshire charged alice ring is the lowest energy solution. In this case the length of the Higgs field never becomes zero as can bee seen in figure 4(b), i.e., the quantity $`\left(1\frac{Tr\mathrm{\Phi }^2}{6f^2}\right)`$ never becomes equal to one.

We pointed out that one of the main factors determining the monopole core meta-stability is the mass ratio $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$ of the charged and neutral Higgs particles. As the mass of the charged excitation becomes much smaller than the mass of the neutral excitation the ’t Hooft Polyakov magnetic monopole is expected to become meta-stable. Clearly this argument holds generically and one expects a core meta-/instability to be a general feature of the ’t Hooft Polyakov magnetic monopole in models with charged Higgs excitations. The nice thing of alice type models is that they naturally suggest an alternative configuration to the ’t Hooft Polyakov type monopoles: the magnetically cheshire charged alice loop.

## 6 Conclusions and outlook

In this paper we investigated the core structure of the unit charge magnetic monopole and discussed the numerical methods we employed in some detail. We already showed in a previous letter  that the core structure of the magnetic monopole is not necessarily spherically symmetric. The model has three mass scales, two of them refer to the Higgs field, one to its length and the other to deviation from the uniaxial direction. The third mass scale is set by the mass of the broken gauge fields. The topologically non-trivial boundary conditions can be met by an “escape” in a non-uniaxial direction. This possibility allows for the length of the Higgs field to stay finite in the core and not go to zero as would be necessary otherwise. As the ratio of the masses, $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$, increases it becomes harder energetically to decrease the length of the Higgs field and one would expect an escape in the non-uniaxial direction.

At the end of section 5 we argued that a core instability of the ‘t Hooft Polyakov magnetic monopole is a general feature of models with charged excitations of the Higgs field. The instability occurs in the region of the parameter space where the charged excitations are much lighter than the neutral excitations. In alice electrodynamics there is also an other, somewhat independent motivation to question the core stability of the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole, provided by the possibility of an alice ring which can carry a magnetic cheshire charge.

Within our ansatz we determined the meta- and instability regions of the spherically symmetric magnetic monopole. We also found that, as expected, the competing configuration is the magnetically cheshire charged alice ring. We did also stumble upon the somewhat unwanted splitcore configurations but fortunately they never became the lowest energy solutions. As we used a variational approach we cannot claim that the alice ring configurations we found are exact solutions to the equations of motion. However they do have every feature which one would expect from an exact alice ring solution. Also, because we used a variational approach the regions of meta-stability and global-stability of the spherically magnetic monopole are with respect to energetic upper bounds so that with respect to the exact solutions, these regions can only become smaller.

As a final comment we want to come back to the fact that the minimum value of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}=\frac{1}{3}`$ for which the broken vacuum is the true vacuum. In section 5 we gave a simple explanation of why the spherically magnetic monopole becomes globally unstable in the limit of large values of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}`$. In the opposite limit one would expect the monopole to be the spherically magnetic monopole to be the global stable solution. However as the minimum value of $`\frac{m_1}{m_2}=\frac{1}{3}`$ there is no guarantee that this ever happens. It could just be that in this or similar models the ‘t Hooft Polyakov type magnetic monopole is never globally stable.

Acknowledgment: This work was partially supported by the ESF COSLAB program.


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# Coherent 𝜋^𝑜-photoproduction from atomic nuclei

## 1 Introduction

The study of meson photoproduction from atomic nuclei is mainly motivated by two strongly interconnected aspects namely possible medium modifications of the excited states of the nucleon and the meson-nucleus interaction. Three different reaction mechanisms can contribute for neutral mesons: coherent production where the reaction amplitudes from all nucleons add coherently and the nucleus remains in its ground state, incoherent meson production with an excited nucleus in the final state, and breakup reactions where at least one nucleon is knocked out of the nucleus. The theoretical treatment of coherent meson production involves many fewer assumptions and approximations than are needed for the description of the complicated final states from breakup reactions. For the latter so far only semiclassical calculations e.g. in the framework of transport models  or mean free path Monte Carlo calculations  are available. In light nuclei with only a few excited states, incoherent excitations of the nucleus can be exploited as spin - isospin filters, but their treatment becomes very complicated for heavy nuclei with a high level density.

As long as final state interaction (FSI) of the mesons is neglected, the cross section of breakup reactions scales with the mass number of the nuclei but the differential cross section of the coherent process is proportional to the square of the mass number and the nuclear mass form factor. Due to the form factor dependence, the coherent process is negligible compared to breakup reactions at large momentum transfers. For this reason the in-medium properties of higher lying nucleon resonances were only investigated via quasifree pion or eta photoproduction (see e.g. ). However, the situation is different for the excitation of the lowest lying nucleon resonance, the so-called $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance ($`P_{33}`$(1232) in the usual notation ). The momenta transfered to nuclei in pion photoproduction to forward angles are so small that the coherent process is dominant for heavy nuclei. Furthermore, the elementary photoproduction of neutral pions from the nucleon is well understood in this energy region and strongly dominated by the excitation of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance .

Coherent $`\pi ^o`$-photoproduction has been extensively treated in the framework of different models. One group of models, which mainly aim at the study of the pion-nucleus interaction and the in-medium properties of the pion, use the distorted wave impulse approximation (DWIA) (see e.g. ). Starting from the elementary pion-nucleon amplitude this approach dynamically takes into account final state interactions (FSI) of the pion in the nuclear medium but neglects medium modifications of the resonance properties (position and widths). On the other hand the in-medium properties of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance have been intensively studied in the framework of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-hole approach with special attention to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and pion dynamics but mostly without non-resonant contributions in the elementary production process (see e.g. ). In the case of 12C Takaki et al.  have extended this calculations to incoherent contributions from low-lying nuclear excitations. Since the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-hole calculations are numerically quite involved, they have been mostly restricted to light nuclei. Carrasco et al.  have tried to overcome this difficulty with a local approximation of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-hole model, which made calculations feasible even for lead. Prompted by the growing interest in medium modifications of hadrons and the expected availability of new, precise data, several extensions of the existing models have been discussed recently. In the framework of the DWIA approach Drechsel and coworkers  presented a calculation which starts from their Unitary Isobar Model for the elementary reaction  and includes a phenomenological parametrization of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ self-energy. Peters et al.  developed a relativistic non-local model which includes medium modifications in the production operator of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance. Abu-Raddad et al.  emphasized the ambiguities arising already from the extrapolation of the elementary amplitude off the mass shell in the relativistic impulse approximation.

On the experimental side progress was much slower. In a very early attempt Schrack et al.  measured unnormalized pion yield curves for light to medium mass nuclei. Since then differential and total cross sections have been measured for carbon and calcium nuclei in the threshold region  but only one attempt was made to measure the cross section throughout the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance for carbon . Only recently measurements up to much higher incident photon energies were reported for deuterium and helium nuclei .

## 2 Experiment and analysis

In this paper we present the results of measurements of coherent $`\pi ^o`$-photoproduction from 12C-, 40Ca-, 93Nb- and Pb-targets throughout the region of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance. The experiments were carried out at the Glasgow tagged photon facility installed at the Mainz Microtron (MAMI) with the TAPS-detector . Details of the experimental setup and the data analysis are summarized in .

The separation of the coherent and incoherent parts is only possible via their different reaction kinematics. This was done by a comparison of the cm energy $`E_\pi (\gamma _1\gamma _2)`$ of the pion derived from the measurement of energy and momentum of its decay photons to the energy $`E_\pi (E_\gamma )`$ derived from the incident photon energy $`E_\gamma `$ under the assumption of coherent pion production . The situation for heavy nuclei differs in two aspects from the deuterium case discussed in . The larger nucleon binding energies and the stronger effects of Fermi motion result in a much better separation of coherent and breakup events in missing energy. On the other hand no model independent simulation of the shape of the contribution from the complicated final states of non-coherent events in missing energy is possible. Therefore only the shape of the coherent contribution was simulated and compared to the data at positive values of the pion energy difference, i.e. in the region where non-coherent components can only contribute due to finite resolution effects. Contributions from breakup reactions are almost completely removed in this way but incoherent excitations to low-lying nuclear states are only incompletely suppressed. Due to the shape of the angular distributions and the $`A^2`$-dependence of the cross section of the coherent process, residual incoherent background is mainly a concern for light nuclei and large pion angles. Examples of the measured energy difference spectra ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E=E_\pi (\gamma _1\gamma _2)E_\pi (E_\gamma ))`$ and the Monte Carlo simulation are shown in fig. 1. The measured shape is almost perfectly reproduced by the simulation at low incident photon energies and small pion angles. At higher energies or larger angles non-coherent contributions become visible.

The absolute normalization of the cross sections was done as in . The total overall uncertainty due to analysis cuts, target thickness and photon flux amounts to 3%. The systematic uncertainty of the simulation of the detection efficiency is estimated to be 10%.

## 3 Results and discussion

The quality of the data obtained is shown in fig. 2, where the differential cross sections averaged over photon energies from 200 - 290 MeV are plotted versus the momentum $`q_A`$ transfered to the nucleus.

The coherent cross section for spin zero nuclei can be written in the most simple plane wave impulse approximation (PWIA)  as:

$$\frac{d\sigma _{PWIA}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}(E_\gamma ,\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi )=\frac{s}{m_N^2}A^2\frac{d\sigma _{NS}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}(E_\gamma ^{},\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi ^{})F^2(q_A)$$
(1)
$$\frac{d\sigma _{NS}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}(E_\gamma ^{},\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi ^{})=\frac{1}{2}\frac{q^{}}{k^{}}|_2(E_\gamma ^{},\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi ^{})|^2sin^2(\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi ^{}),$$
(2)
where $`E_\gamma `$ and $`\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi `$ are the incident photon energy and the pion polar angle in the photon-nucleus cm-system, $`A`$ is the atomic mass number, $`m_N`$ is the nucleon mass and $`F(q_A)`$ the nuclear mass form factor The total energy $`\sqrt{s}`$ of the photon-nucleon pair, the photon energy and momentum $`E_\gamma ^{}`$, $`k^{}`$, and the pion angle and momentum $`\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi ^{}`$, $`q^{}`$ in the photon-nucleon cm-system are evaluated from the average momentum $`\stackrel{}{p_N}`$ of the nucleon in the factorization approximation $`\stackrel{}{p}_N=\stackrel{}{q}_A(A1)/2A`$. The spin-independent elementary cross section $`d\sigma _{NS}/d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is calculated from the standard Chew-Goldberger-Low-Nambu (CGLN) amplitude $`_2`$  taken from  and averaged over proton und neutron numbers.

The influence of the form factor and the $`sin^2`$-term, which forces the forward cross section to zero, is clearly visible in fig. 2. The data allow also a direct check of the characteristic $`A^2`$-dependence. For this purpose we define the ratio:

$$R_{PWIA}=(\frac{d\sigma _{exp}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }})/[\frac{s}{m_N^2}A^2(\frac{d\sigma _{NS}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }})]=F^2(q_A)(\frac{d\sigma _{exp}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }})/(\frac{d\sigma _{PWIA}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }})$$
(3)
which is plotted in fig. 3 versus $`q_A/q_0`$, where $`q_0`$ is the momentum transfer at the first diffraction minimum. As long as PWIA is valid, the ratios should equal the square of the nuclear mass form factors, which are similar for all nuclei as function of $`q_A/q_0`$. For the lowest incident photon energies around 220 MeV the ratios for all nuclei are indeed very similar and close to unity for small momentum transfers which demonstrates the approximate validity of the PWIA in this region. For higher photon energies we expect significant FSI effects since the pions then have a much larger cross section for the excitation of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance. The data show this effect as a decrease of the cross section ratio with mass number.

A detailed investigation of the FSI effects and possible medium modifications of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance requires an analysis far beyond PWIA. As a first step the angular distributions for 12C, 40Ca and Pb are compared in fig. 4 to results from the model of Drechsel et al. . The three curves in the figure correspond to PWIA, DWIA and the full model. In addition to pion FSI this includes also the medium modification of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance properties due to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-nucleus interaction via a phenomenological parametrization of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ self-energy. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ self-energy was fitted to the 4He$`(\gamma ,\pi ^o)^4`$He reaction  and this parametrization was used without modification to calculate the cross sections for C, Ca and Pb.

At low incident photon energies ($`E_\gamma =200`$ MeV) the difference between PWIA, DWIA and additional $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-modification is small. However, the cross sections are strongly overestimated around the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance position by the PWIA and DWIA calculations. This in contrast to our results for coherent photoproduction from the deuteron  which are in good agreement with the DWIA calculation. Reasonable agreement for the heavier nuclei is only achieved when the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-nucleus interaction is taken into account. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-self energy extracted from the 4He data for this incident photon energy ($`E_\gamma =290`$ MeV) is $`Re(V)19`$ MeV and $`Im(V)33`$ MeV , corresponding to a significant effective broadening of the resonance by 66 MeV. Based on a comparison of their prediction to the few data then available for 12C$`(\gamma ,\pi ^o)^{12}`$C it was suggested by Drechsel et al.  that the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-nucleus interaction already saturates for 4He. The present data demonstrate that indeed the A-dependence of the potential is not large since the agreement between model predictions and data is very good for carbon and calcium and still reasonable for lead.

A more detailed comparison of the data to model predictions requires some remarks concerning possible background from incoherent excitations of nuclear levels. It was pointed out by Takaki et al.  that such components will have a significant effect on the total cross section since they peak at more central pion angles which gives them a large weight for the total cross section. The prediction of the angular distribution for 12C at $`E_\gamma `$=290 MeV from their $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-hole model with and without incoherent excitations is also compared to the data in fig. 4. The model underestimates the data, even when incoherent excitations are included. Some examples of the differential cross sections weighted with $`sin(\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi ^{})`$ are compared to the predictions from  in fig. 5. This presentation shows directly the contribution of different angular ranges to the total cross section.

A first estimate of the total coherent cross sections has been obtained by integration of the angular distributions up to momentum transfers of 330, 340, 360, 360 MeV for 12C, 40Ca, 93Nb and Pb, respectively. These momentum transfers (see fig. 2) correspond to the position of the first (C), second (Ca), third (Nb) and fourth (Pb) minimum of the form factor. The results of the integration are shown in fig. 6. This restriction of the angular ranges is reasonable since the model  predicts that approximately 98% of the total coherent cross section is contained in these ranges, but it significantly suppresses incoherent background which occurs at higher momentum transfers (as shown for 12C in fig. 6). Since the total cross sections obtained in this way (open circles in fig. 6) may still include residual background from incoherent processes in the chosen angular ranges they represent only an upper limit of the coherent cross section. An estimate of these incoherent contributions has been obtained under the assumption that the differential cross section in the diffraction minima of the coherent process is entirely due to incoherent processes and that these contributions can be smoothly interpolated (see fig 5). The estimated corrections are in the range 12% - 16% at $`E_\gamma `$=200 MeV and 14% - 26% at $`E_\gamma `$=350 MeV. These corrections are certainly overestimates since the DWIA calculations from  indicate that the coherent cross section is not zero at the diffraction minima and this will be further accentuated by the experimental resolution. The corrected data (filled circles in fig. 6) thus represent a lower limit of the coherent cross section. The results with this correction are compared to previous data and model predictions in fig. 6. The only data available in this energy region so far are from the experiment of Arends et al.  who used an active target for the separation of coherent and non-coherent events in $`\pi ^o`$-photoproduction from 12C. However, in that experiment events from breakup reactions e.g. with a low energy neutron in the final state could not be completely suppressed. The comparison to the new data shows that at higher energies such contaminations were obviously large. The model predictions by Drechsel et al.  are in good agreement with the carbon and calcium data but less so for lead. The local approximation to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-hole model by Carrasco et al.  underestimates all total cross sections and shows a different energy dependence. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-hole calculation for 12C by Takaki et al.  also underestimates the data on an absolute scale, although the energy dependence is quite well reproduced. Note that in this case the data integrated over the full angular range (open diamonds in fig. 6) represent a lower limit for the cross section of coherent plus incoherent events from  since part of the incoherent contribution in the data is suppressed by the missing energy cut. However, the prediction underestimates even this lower limit. Finally the predictions from  for 40Ca with vector and tensor parametrization of the elementary amplitude both disagree with the data.

## 4 Conclusion

Coherent $`\pi ^o`$-photoproduction from nuclei was studied in detail throughout the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance region. The characteristic features of the coherent process, the proportionality of the cross section to $`sin^2(\mathrm{\Theta }_\pi )`$, to the nuclear mass form factor and to the square of the nuclear mass numbers are demonstrated. The data are quite well reproduced by simple PWIA calculations at incident photon energies around 200 MeV, but at higher photon energies distortion effects become large. Predictions for the coherent cross section are available from many detailed theoretical studies, however the results from different models are not at all in agreement (see fig. 6). Best agreement with the data is found for the model by Drechsel et al. . A comparison of the experimental results to these calculations demonstrates their sensitivity to medium modifications of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-isobar. It is shown, that reasonable agreement between data and model predictions for all nuclei is achieved with a parametrization of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-self energy fitted to the differential cross sections of the reaction 4He$`(\gamma ,\pi ^o)^4`$He. This is an indication that the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-nucleus potential is not strongly dependent on the nuclear mass number but saturates already for 4He.

Acknowledgments We wish to acknowledge the outstanding support of the accelerator group of MAMI, as well as many other scientists and technicians of the Institute für Kernphysik at the University of Mainz. We thank M. Röbig-Landau for his contribution to the calibration and analysis of the data. We gratefully acknowledge many stimulating discussions with L. Tiator. This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 201) and the UK Science and Engineering Research Council.