THE STANDARD MODEL IS NATURAL AS MAGNETIC GAUGE THEORY

We suggest that the Standard Model can be viewed as the magnetic dual of a gauge theory featuring only fermionic matter content. We show this by first introducing a Pati–Salam like extension of the Standard Model and then relating it to a possible dual electric theory featuring only fermionic matter. The absence of scalars in the electric theory indicates that the associated magnetic theory is free from quadratic divergences. Our novel solution to the Standard Model hierarchy problem leads also to a new insight on the mystery of the observed number of fundamental fermion generations by naturally explaining why it has to be at least three.

Magnetic pinch-type instability in stellar radiative zones

The solar tachocline is shown as hydrodynamically stable against nonaxisymmetric disturbances if it is true that no cos4θ term exists in its rotation law. We also show that the toroidal field of 200 Gauss amplitude which produces the tachocline in the magnetic theory of Rüdiger & Kitchatinov (1997) is stable against nonaxisymmetric MHD disturbances – but it becomes unstable for rotation periods slightly slower than 25 days. The instability of such weak fields lives from the high thermal diffusivity of stellar radiation zones compared with the magnetic diffusivity. The growth times, however, result as very long (of order of 105 rotation times). With estimations of the chemical mixing we find the maximal possible field amplitude to be ~500 Gauss in order to explain the observed lithium abundance of the Sun. Dynamos with such low field amplitudes should not be relevant for the solar activity cycle.With nonlinear simulations of MHD Taylor-Couette flows it is shown that for the rotation-dominated magnetic instability the resulting eddy viscosity is only of the order of the molecular viscosity. The Schmidt number as the ratio of viscosity and chemical diffusion grows to values of ~20. For the majority of the stellar physics applications, the magnetic-dominated Tayler instability will be quenched by the stellar rotation.

NON-ABELIAN VORTEX AND CONFINEMENT

We discuss general properties and possible types of magnetic vortices in non-Abelian gauge theories (we consider here G = SU (N), SO (N), USp (2N)) in the Higgs phase. The sources of such vortices carry "fractional" quantum numbers such as Zn charge (for SU (N)), but also full non-Abelian charges of the dual gauge group. If such a model emerges as an effective dual magnetic theory of the fundamental (electric) theory, the non-Abelian vortices can provide for the mechanism of quark confinement in the latter.