Non-Abelian bosonic currents in cosmic strings

A non-Abelian generalization of the neutral Witten current-carrying string model is discussed in which the bosonic current carrier belongs to a two-dimensional representation of SU(2). We find that the current-carrying solutions can be of three different kinds: either the current spans a U(1) subgroup, and in which case one is left with an Abelian current-carrying string, or the three currents are all lightlike, traveling in the same direction (only left or right movers). The third, genuinely non-Abelian situation, cannot be handled within a cylindrically symmetric framework, but can be shown to depend on all possible string Lorentz invariant quantities that can be constructed out of the phase gradients.