Gravitating Yang-Mills vortices in 4+1 spacetime dimensions

The coupling to gravity in D = 5 spacetime dimensions is considered for the particle-like and vortex-type solutions obtained by uplifting the D = 4 Yang-Mills instantons and D = 3 Yang-Mills-Higgs monopoles. It turns out that the particles become completely destroyed by gravity, while the vortices admit a rich spectrum of gravitating generalizations. Such vortex defects may be interesting in view of the AdS/CFT correspondence or in the context of the brane world scenario. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.