NonAbelian Vortices, Large Winding Limits and Aharonov-Bohm Effects

Abstract: Remarkable simplification arises from considering vortex equations in the large winding limit. This was recently used in [1] to display all sorts of vortex zeromodes, the orientational, translational, fermionic as well as semi-local, and to relate them to the apparently distinct phenomena of the Nielsen-Olesen-Ambjorn magnetic instabilities. Here we extend these analyses to more general types of BPS nonAbelian vortices, taking as a prototype a system with gauged U(1) x SU(N) x SU(N) symmetry where the VEV of charged scalar fields in the bifundamental representation breaks the symmetry to SU(N){l+r} . The presence of the massless SU(N){l+r} gauge fields in 4D bulk introduces all sorts of non-local, topological phenomena such as the nonAbelian Aharonov-Bohm effects, which in the theory with global SU(N)_r group (g_r=0) are washed away by the strongly fluctuating orientational zeromodes in the worldsheet. Physics changes qualitatively at the moment the right gauge coupling constant g_r is turned on.