NONTOPOLOGICAL MAGNETIC MONOPOLES AND NEW MAGNETICALLY CHARGED BLACK-HOLES

The existence of nonsingular classical magnetic monopole solutions is usually understood in terms of topologically nontrivial Higgs field configurations. We show that finite energy magnetic monopole solutions also exist within a class of purely Abelian gauge theories containing charged vector mesons, even though the possibility of nontrivial topology does not even arise provided that certain relationships among the parameters of the theory are satisfied. These solutions are singular if these relationships do not hold, but even then become meaningful once the theory is coupled to gravity, for they then give rise to an interesting new class of magnetically charged black holes with hair.