Aharonov-Bohm defects

Abstract

We discuss what happens when a field receiving an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) phase develops a vacuum expectation value (VEV), with an example of an Alice string in a $U(1)\times SU(2)$ gauge theory coupled with complex triplet scalar fields. We introduce scalar fields belonging to the doublet representation of $SU(2)$, charged or chargeless under the $U(1)$ gauge symmetry, that receives an AB phase around the Alice string. When the doublet develops a VEV, the Alice string turns to a global string in the absence of the interaction depending on the relative phase between the doublet and triplet, while, in the presence of such an interaction, the Alice string is confined by a soliton or domain wall and therefore the spontaneous breaking of a spatial rotation around the string is accompanied. We call such an object induced by an AB phase as an ``AB defect'', and argue that such a phenomenon is ubiquitously appearing in various systems.

25 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Non-Abelian Alice strings in two-flavor dense QCD
• Topological confinement of vortices in two-flavor dense QCD
• Chiral non-Abelian vortices and their confinement in three flavor dense QCD
• Alice meets Boojums in neutron stars: vortices penetrating two-flavor quark-hadron continuity
• Confinement and moduli locking of Alice strings and monopoles