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Dirac-Schwinger Quantization for Emergent Magnetic Monopoles?

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-05-06 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

In Refs.[1-4] Dirac and Schwinger showed the existence of a magnetic monopole required a charge quantization condition which we write following Dirac as eg4π=n2,  n=0,±1,  ±2,\frac{eg}{4\pi\hbar}=\frac{n}{2},\; n=0,\pm 1,\; \pm 2, \ldots. Here, gg is the magnetic monopole charge and ee is the electric charge of the positron. Recently, in Refs. [5,6], it has been shown experimentally that frustrated spin-ice systems exhibit 'emergent' magnetic monopoles. We show that, within the experimental errors, the respective magnetic charges obey the Dirac-Schwinger quantization condition. Possible implications are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.04704,
  title  = {Dirac-Schwinger Quantization for Emergent Magnetic Monopoles?},
  author = {A. Farhan and M. Saccone and B. F. L. Ward},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.04704},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

4 pages, no figures; typo corrected, extended discussion, orcid links added, new department name added

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:00:12.516Z