Topological characterization of higher-dimensional charged Taub–NUT instantons

Abstract

Recently, we have shown that non-selfdual self-gravitating dyonic fields with magnetic mass generalize the Dirac monopole. The unique topological index, which characterizes the field, is a four-dimensional analogue of the famous monopole configuration. An unexpected result of this analysis is that the electric parameter can only take certain discrete values as a consequence of applying the path integral approach to quantize the magnetic flux. Here, we show how this result can be generalized to higher dimensions, considering a special type of inhomogeneous geometries. Our results apply to a vast range of theories and situations in which topological charges are present. For concreteness, we focus here on Lovelock–Maxwell solutions and show that the magnetic flux corresponds to a topological excitation and the electric flux becomes discrete.