Eur. Phys. J. C (2008) 56: 87-95
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-008-0628-0

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Monopolium: the key to monopoles

¹ Laboratorio de Física Teórica, Departamento de Física, IFLP, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, C.C. 67 1900, La Plata, Argentina
² Departamento de Física Teórica and Instituto de Física Corpuscular, Universidad de Valencia and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 46100, Burjassot (Valencia), Spain
³ TH-Division, PH Department, CERN, 1211, Genève 23, Switzerland

^* e-mail: vicente.vento@uv.es

Received: 6 September 2007
Revised: 15 April 2008
Published online: 3 June 2008

Abstract

Dirac showed that the existence of one magnetic pole in the universe could offer an explanation for the discrete nature of the electric charge. Magnetic poles appear naturally in most grand unified theories. Their discovery would be of the greatest importance for particle physics and cosmology. The intense experimental search carried out thus far has not met with success. Moreover, if the monopoles are very massive their production is outside the range of present day facilities. A way out of this impasse would be if the monopoles bind to form monopolium, a monopole–antimonopole bound state, which is so strongly bound that it has a relatively small mass. Under these circumstances it could be produced with present day facilities and the existence of monopoles could be indirectly proven. We study the feasibility of detecting monopolium in present and future accelerators.