Monopole-antimonopole pair production by magnetic fields
Abstract
Quantum electrodynamics predicts that in a strong electric field, electron-positron pairs are produced by the Schwinger process, which can be interpreted as quantum tunnelling through the Coulomb potential barrier. If magnetic monopoles exist, monopole-antimonopole pairs would be similarly produced in strong magnetic fields by the electromagnetic dual of this process. The production rate can be computed using semiclassical techniques without relying on perturbation theory, and therefore it can be done reliably in spite of the monopoles' strong coupling to the electromagnetic field. This article explains this phenomenon and discusses the bounds on monopole masses arising from the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe, which are in neutron stars known as magnetars and in heavy ion collision experiments such as lead-lead collisions carried out in November 2018 in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It will also discuss open theoretical questions affecting the calculation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1907.05745,
title = {Monopole-antimonopole pair production by magnetic fields},
author = {Arttu Rajantie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.05745},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
7 pages. Based on a talk given at The Royal Society Scientific Discussion Meeting: Topological Avatars of New Physics, 4-5 March 2019. Equation layout issues fixed