SO(10) Cosmic Strings and SU(3) Color Cheshire Charge

Abstract

Certain cosmic strings that occur in GUT models such as $SO(10)$ can carry a magnetic flux which acts nontrivially on objects carrying $SU(3{)}_{color}$ quantum numbers. We show that such strings are non-Abelian Alice strings carrying nonlocalizable colored ``Cheshire" charge. We examine claims made in the literature that $SO(10)$ strings can have a long-range, topological Aharonov-Bohm interaction that turns quarks into leptons, and observe that such a process is impossible. We also discuss flux-flux scattering using a multi-sheeted formalism.

37 Pages, 8 Figures (available upon request) phyzzx, iassns-hep-93-6, itp-sb-93-60

References in corpus (7)

• Quantum Field Theory of Nonabelian Strings and Vortices
• Non-abelian vortices and non-abelian statistics
• Quantum symmetries in discrete gauge theories
• On Detecting Discrete Cheshire Charge
• Topological Approach to Alice Electrodynamics
• Anyons in discrete gauge theories with Chern-Simons terms
• SO(10) Cosmic Strings and Baryon Number Violation

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Cosmic strings
• Microphysics of SO(10) Cosmic Strings
• Note on a solution to domain wall problem with the Lazarides-Shafi mechanism in axion dark matter models
• BPS Alice strings
• Non-Abelian String Conductivity
• The effective action of a BPS Alice string
• Aharonov-Bohm defects
• Scattering off an SO(10) cosmic string
• Complementarity in Wormhole Chromodynamics
• Confinement and moduli locking of Alice strings and monopoles