Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 62: 587-592
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1069-0

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Monopolium production from photon fusion at the Large Hadron Collider

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: 3 November 2008
Revised: 6 May 2009
Published online: 4 June 2009

Abstract

Magnetic monopoles have attracted the attention of physicists since the founding of the electromagnetic theory. Their search has been a constant endeavor which was intensified when Dirac established the relation between the existence of monopoles and charge quantization. However, these searches have been unsuccessful. We have recently proposed that monopolium, a monopole–antimonopole bound state, so strongly bound that it has a relatively small mass, could be easier to find and become an indirect but clear signature for the existence of magnetic monopoles. Here we extend our previous analysis for its production to two photon fusion at LHC energies.