Fluxbranes, generalized symmetries, and Verlinde’s metastable monopole

Journal Article · 07 February 2024 · Physical Review. D.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.046007 · OSTI ID:2293627

Cvetič, Mirjam; Heckman, Jonathan J.; Hübner, Max; Torres, Ethan

The stringy realization of generalized symmetry operators involves wrapping “branes at infinity”. We argue that in the case of continuous (as opposed to discrete) symmetries, the appropriate objects are fluxbranes. We use this perspective to revisit the phase structure of Verlinde’s monopole, a proposed particle satisfies the Bogomol’nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) condition when gravity is decoupled, but is non-BPS and metastable when gravity is switched on. Geometrically, this monopole is obtained from branes wrapped on locally stable but globally trivial cycles of a compactification geometry. The fluxbrane picture allows us to characterize electric (respectively magnetic) confinement (respectively screening) in the 4D theory as a result of monopole decay. In the presence of the fluxbrane, this decay also creates lower-dimensional fluxbranes, which in the field theory is interpreted as the creation of an additional topological field theory sector. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0013528
• OSTI ID: 2293627
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D., Journal Name: Physical Review. D. Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 109; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 2470-0010
• Publisher: American Physical SocietyCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English