Monopole Planets and Galaxies

Abstract

Spherical clusters of SU(2) BPS monopoles are investigated here. A large class of monopole solutions is found using an abelian approximation, where the clusters are spherically symmetric, although exact solutions cannot have this symmetry precisely. Monopole clusters generalise the Bolognesi magnetic bag solution of the same charge, but they are always larger. Selected density profiles give structures analogous to planets of uniform density, and galaxies with a density decaying as the inverse square of the distance from the centre. The Bolognesi bag itself has features analogous to a black hole, and this analogy between monopole clusters and astrophysical objects with or without black holes in their central region is developed further. It is also shown that certain exact, platonic monopoles of small charge have sizes and other features consistent with what is expected for magnetic bags.

23 pages. Revised version to appear in Physical Review D. New introduction and conclusions; analogy between monopoles and astrophysical objects developed further

References in corpus (4)

• A Monopole Wall
• BPS Magnetic Monopole Bags
• Magnetic Bags and Black Holes
• The large N limit of the Nahm transform

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Moduli of Monopole Walls and Amoebas
• BPS Soliton Solutions of a D3-brane Action
• Q-Monopole-Ball: A Topological and Nontopological Soliton
• Hyperbolic vortices with large magnetic flux
• Dwarf Galaxy Sized Monopoles as Dark Matter?
• Symmetric hyperbolic monopoles
• Holographic Entanglement Entropy of the Coulomb Branch
• Tunneling decay of false domain walls: the silence of the lambs
• Magnetic Domains
• Magnetic bags in hyperbolic space
• Magnetic bag like solutions to the SU(2) monopole equations on R^3
• Holographic Coulomb Branch Solitons, Quasinormal Modes, and Black Holes
• High Q BPS Monopole Bags are Urchins
• Gauge Theories on the Coulomb branch