Monopolium, the key to monopoles

C.A. GARCÍA CANAL

San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

Simposio; VII Latin American Symposium on High Energy Physics (SILAFAE), IX Argentine; 2009

SILAFAE

Dirac showed that the existence of one magnetic pole in the universecould offer an explanation for the discrete nature of the electriccharge. Magnetic poles appear naturally in most Grand UnifiedTheories. Their discovery would be of greatest importance forparticle physics and cosmology. The intense experimental searchcarried thus far has not met with success. Moreover, if themonopoles are very massive their production is outside the range ofpresent day facilities. A way out of this impasse would be if themonopoles bind to form monopolium, a monopole- antimonopole boundstate, which is so strongly bound, that it has a relatively smallmass. Under these circumstances it could be produced with presentday facilities and the existence of monopoles could be indirectlyproven. We study the feasibility of detecting monopolium in presentand future accelerators.