Advent of Non-Abelian Vortices: Monopole, Vortex and Confinement

by Kenichi Konishi (Pisa)

Friday 12 Jun 2009, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

122:026

Since the discovery of non-Abelian vortices in the context of supersymmetric gauge theories (2003), our understanding of soliton vortices and their roles in the strong gauge dynamics has improved considerably. The problem is deeply related to the issues of non-Abelian monopoles and the quark confinement, still not satisfactorily understood, in spite of the ground-breaking development made possible by the exact Seiberg-Witten solutions of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories. In this talk the key ideas and results of the development of the last several years will be reviewed. The main topics include: the non-Abelian monopoles and GNO duality through the better-understood non-Abelian vortices; quantum dynamics of vortex orientational modes and its implications; and very recent results on vortices in more general class of gauge theories and on the fractional vortices.