The concept of electric charge and the hypothesis of magnetic poles

Abstract

We examine a generic field theory in which the field particle has two couplings. It is of particular interest when these are the electroweak, [Formula: see text], and the hypothetical magnetoweak, [Formula: see text]. The new field operators are obtained by replacing the field operators [Formula: see text] of the Standard Model or of similar models by [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text] is an element of the [Formula: see text]-dimensional representation of the SLq(2) algebra, which is also the knot algebra. The new field is assumed to exist in two phases distinguished by two values of [Formula: see text]: [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] which label the electroweak and magnetoweak phases, respectively. We assume that the observed leptons and quarks are mainly composed of [Formula: see text]-preons and are in agreement with the observed charge spectrum of leptons and quarks. It is now proposed that there is also a [Formula: see text]-phase where [Formula: see text]-leptons and [Formula: see text]-quarks are composed of mainly [Formula: see text]-preons. It is assumed that the [Formula: see text]-charge is very large compared to the [Formula: see text]-charge and the mass of the [Formula: see text]-charged particle is even larger since the mass of all of these particles is partially determined by the eigenvalues of [Formula: see text], a polynomial in [Formula: see text], that multiplies the Higgs mass term and where [Formula: see text] Since these values of [Formula: see text] indicate that particles in the [Formula: see text]-phase are much more massive, they should be harder to produce or to observe. Since the remote parts of the universe are at increasingly higher temperatures, magnetic poles are perhaps most likely to be found in deep probes of space as well as in high energy accelerators. The section entitled “Introduction” was added only after it was generally realized that the birth of the present universe was probably due to a nuclear explosion.