Physical implications of electroweak monopole

Abstract

The electroweak monopole in the standard model, the existence, characteristic features, cosmological production and physical implications are discussed. The discovery of the Higgs particle has been thought to be the ‘final’ test of the standard model. If the standard model is correct, however, it must have the electroweak monopole as the electroweak generalization of the Dirac monopole. This means that the detection of this monopole should become the final and topological test of the standard model. If detected, it becomes the first magnetically charged and stable topological elementary particle in the history of physics. Moreover, it has deep implications in physics. In cosmology, it could generate the primordial magnetic black holes which could explain the dark matter, become the seed of the large-scale structures of the universe, and be the source of the intergalactic magnetic field. Just as importantly, it could generate the hitherto unknown magnetic current which could have huge practical applications. Furthermore, the existence of the monopole requires us to reformulate the perturbative expansion in quantum field theory. This makes the detection of the electroweak monopole a most urgent issue. We discuss useful tips for the MoEDAL detector at LHC and similar experiments on how to detect the monopole successfully. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Topological avatars of new physics’.

Implication of Electroweak Monopole

“…This assures that, unlike the grand unification monopole, the electroweak monopole has no monopole problem in cosmology. Nevertheless there are enough remaining monopoles in the present universe that we could detect without much difficulty [10].…”

“…Although the electroweak monopole is the electroweak generalization of the Dirac monopole, it is different from the Dirac monopole [8,9,10]. First, the Dirac monopole does not have to exist in electrodynamics.…”

“…The experimental detection of Dirac monopole has been a blind search in the dark room because we could not predict the mass [11]. Although the Cho-Maison monopole is singular and has an infinite energy, we can estimate the mass to be of the order of 4 to 10 TeV [8,9,10]. This is because the monopole acquires the mass from the same Higgs mechanism which gives the mass to the W-boson, except that the monopole has the magnetic coupling which makes the mass roughly hundred times heavier than the W-boson mass.…”

“…However, what is important for the monopole production is the change of topology induced by thermal fluctuation of the Higgs vacuum, which becomes insignificant when the temperature cools down below the Ginzburg temperature [23]. This implies that the electroweak monopole production starts during the electroweak phase transition around 100 GeV and stops after the universe cools down below the Ginzburg temperature around 60 GeV [10].…”

Regularization of electroweak monopole by charge screening and BPS energy bound

“…Third, unlike the Dirac monopole which is optional, this one must exist if the standard model is This means that the discovery of this monopole, not the Higgs particle, should be interpreted as the final test (in fact the topological test) of the standard model. Moreover, this monopole could play important roles in cosmology [9]. In the early universe it could become the primordial black hole which could explain the dark matter, and become the seed of large scale structure of the universe.…”