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Magnetic Monopoles

They have not been observed. They were predicted by Dirac and many GUT models.

  • Dirac proposed magnetic monopoles which would simplify the model of electromagnetism. Dirac monopoles would not fit into the standard model, and would require modifications.
  • In GUT theories, early universe would've produced magnetic monopoles. But it is hard to reproduce, and LHC energies are too low for them.

Studies

  • Nature Materials Article (Open Access) (2014): Discovery of magnetic monopole quasi-particles in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. They do violate the zero-divergence law.
  • HN Thread | Nature Materials Article (Open Access) (Dec 2023): Discovery of magnetic monopole quasi-particles, which are multiple particles whose combined spin effects generate a monopole on a 2D cross-section. Not a big deal fundamentally. But could be in line with my idea of making magnetic monopoles manually.

Implications

Their existence would imply:

  • Maxwell's equations would clean up
    • \(\nabla \cdot \vec E = \frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0}\)
    • \(\nabla \cdot \vec B = \mu_0 \rho_m\)
    • \(\nabla \times \vec B = \mu_0 \epsilon_0 \frac{\partial E}{\partial t} + \mu_0 J_e\)
    • \(\nabla \times \vec E = \frac{-\partial B}{\partial t} − J_m\)
  • Quantization of all electric charge as proposed by Dirac
    • \(2q_eq_m=n\pi\)
  • We would be able to catalyze proton decay via the Rubakov-Callan effect.
    • With this, we could get energy from protons using monopoles without using up the monopole itself.
  • Other than that technological impact would likely be zero since they are rare.

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