Gravitational catalysis of merons in Einstein-Yang-Mills theory

Abstract: We construct regular configurations of the Einstein-Yang-Mills theory in various dimensions. The gauge field is of meron-type: it is proportional to a pure gauge (with a suitable parameter $\lambda$ determined by the field equations). The corresponding smooth gauge transformation cannot be deformed continuously to the identity. In the three-dimensional case we consider the inclusion of a Chern-Simons term into the analysis, allowing $\lambda$ to be different from its usual value of $1/2$. In four dimensions, the gravitating meron is a smooth Euclidean wormhole interpolating between different vacua of the theory. In five and higher dimensions smooth meron-like configurations can also be constructed by considering warped products of the three-sphere and lower-dimensional Einstein manifolds. In all cases merons (which on flat spaces would be singular) become regular due to the coupling with general relativity. This effect is named "gravitational catalysis of merons".