Universality of merons in non-Abelian gauge theories

Abstract: Within the wide variety of topological solitons supported by Yang--Mills theory, merons occupy a particularly distinguished role. Despite their simplicity, they represent genuinely non-Abelian configurations that can be regarded as the fundamental building blocks of instantons, and they provide a qualitatively accurate picture of confinement. In this work, we show that such configurations are, in fact, supported by a broad class of non-Abelian gauge theories beyond Yang--Mills, provided that suitable physical conditions are satisfied, thereby rendering them universal. Taking into account their gravitational backreaction, we further demonstrate that both black holes and Euclidean wormholes sourced by merons admit natural extensions within this generalized framework, which regularizes the singular behavior they exhibit in constant--curvature backgrounds. As a byproduct, we construct a regular black hole solution supported by genuinely non-Abelian gauge fields, based on a non-Abelian generalization of the Ayón--Beato--García nonlinear electrodynamics. As a consequence of this universality, physical effects intrinsic to merons are likewise expected to be universal. A notable example is the spin from isospin effect, whereby bosonic excitations charged under the gauge group can effectively behave as fermionic degrees of freedom.