Non-Abelian magnetic monopoles (Q1068412)

The twistor methods of Atiyah, Hitchin and Ward which classified instantons in terms of holomorphic bundles were first applied by Hitchin to SU(2) monopoles. He showed that a magnetic monopole, or solution of the Bogomolny equations, was determined by an algebraic curve, which he called the spectral curve, in the tangent bundle to complex projective space. This paper shows that for a monopole for a compact group K there are spectral curves \(S_ 1,...,S_ r\) labelled by the nodes of the Dynkin diagram. If i and j are joined on the Dynkin diagram the intersection \(S_ i\cap S_ j\) decomposes into two pieces. Knowledge of this decomposition and the curves is shown to determine the monopole if \(K=SU(n)\), SO(2n) or Sp(n).