English

S-Duality for Non-Abelian Monopoles

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-01-21 v2

Abstract

In N=4\mathcal{N}=4 super-Yang-Mills theory with gauge group GG spontaneously broken to a subgroup HH, S-duality requires that the BPS monopole spectrum organizes into the same representation as W-bosons in the dual theory, where GG^{\vee} is broken to HH^{\vee}. The expectation has been extensively verified in the maximally broken phase GU(1)rG\to U(1)^r. Here we address the non-Abelian regime in which HH contains a semisimple factor HsH^{s}. Using the stratified description of monopole moduli space, we give a general proof of this matching for any simple gauge group GG. Each BPS monopole state is naturally labeled by a weight of the relevant WW-boson representation of (H)s(H^{\vee})^{s}. We construct non-Abelian magnetic gauge transformation operators implementing the (H)s(H^{\vee})^{s}-action on the monopole Hilbert space, which commute with the electric HsH^{s}-transformations and thereby realize the Hs×(H)sH^{s}\times (H^{\vee})^{s} symmetry at the level of monopole quantum mechanics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.24743,
  title  = {S-Duality for Non-Abelian Monopoles},
  author = {Shan Hu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.24743},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

49 pages + appendices; v2: corrections and clarifications in Section 5

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:46:44.713Z