Do heavy monopoles hide from us?

Abstract

Dirac demonstrated that the existence of a single magnetic monopole in the universe could explain the discrete nature of electric charge. Magnetic monopoles naturally arise in most grand unified theories. However, the extensive experimental searches conducted thus far have not been successful. Here, we propose a mechanism in which magnetic monopoles bind deeply with neutral states, effectively hiding some of the properties of free monopoles. We explore various scenarios for these systems and analyze their detectability. In particular, one scenario is especially interesting, as it predicts a light state—an analog of an electron but with magnetic charge instead of electric charge—which we refer to as a magnetron.