Kibble mechanism for electroweak magnetic monopoles and magnetic fields

Abstract: The vacuum manifold of the standard electroweak model is a three-sphere when one considers homogeneous Higgs field configurations. For inhomogeneous configurations we argue that the vacuum manifold is the Hopf fibered three sphere and that this viewpoint leads to general criteria to detect electroweak monopoles and Z-strings. We extend the Kibble mechanism to study the formation of electroweak monopoles and strings during electroweak symmetry breaking. The distribution of magnetic monopoles produces magnetic fields that have a spectrum $B_\lambda \propto \lambda^{-2}$, where $\lambda$ is a smearing length scale. Even as the magnetic monopoles annihilate due to the confining Z-strings, the magnetic field evolves with the turbulent plasma and may be relevant for cosmological observations.