Abelian decomposition of SO(2N) Yang-Mills theory

Faddeev and Niemi have proposed a decomposition of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory in terms of new variables, appropriate for describing the theory in the inf rared limit. We extend this method to SO(2N) Yang-Mills theory. We find tha t the SO(2N) connection decomposes according to irreducible representations of SO (N). The low-energy limit of the decomposed theory is expected to de scribe solitonlike configurations with nontrivial topological numbers. How the method of decomposition generalizes for SO(2N + 1) Yang-Mills theory is also discussed.