Thin-Wall Monopoles in a False Vacuum

We study numerically the existence in a false vacuum, of magnetic monopoles which are “thin-walled”, , which correspond to a spherical region of radius R that is essentially trivial surrounded by a wall of thickness Δ≪ R, hence the name thin wall, and finally an exterior region that essentially corresponds to a pure Abelian magnetic monopole. Such monopoles were dubbed false monopoles and can occur in non-abelian gauge theories where the symmetry-broken vacuum is actually the false vacuum. This idea was first proposed in , however, their proof of the existence of false monopoles was incorrect. Here we fill this lacuna and demonstrate numerically the existence of thin-wall false monopoles. The decay via quantum tunnelling of the false monopoles could be of importance to cosmological scenarios which entertain epochs in which the universe is trapped in a symmetry-breaking false vacuum.