Magnetic Mixing -- Electric Minicharges from Magnetic Monopoles

TL;DR

This paper explores how magnetic monopoles in hidden sectors can acquire small electric charges through magnetic mixing, potentially leading to observable effects in low-energy experiments.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of magnetic mixing as a natural partner to kinetic mixing, showing how monopoles can gain minicharges under visible electromagnetism.

Findings

Hidden sector monopoles can acquire small electric charges.

Magnetic mixing often arises alongside kinetic mixing.

Monopoles could be light and detectable in experiments.

Abstract

Many extensions of the Standard Model require the existence of a "hidden" sector. We consider settings where the hidden sector in the infrared contains a U(1) gauge factor with magnetic monopoles, for instance 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles of an underlying non-abelian gauge group. In the presence of CP violation these monopoles acquire an electric charge in the hidden sector due to the Witten effect. We show that quite generally they also acquire (small) electric charges under the visible electromagnetic gauge group. This is a result of "magnetic mixing" which, as we show, often arises as a natural partner of kinetic mixing. Both kinetic and magnetic mixing are naturally induced radiatively even if the low-energy U(1)s arise from a single non-abelian gauge group. We argue that the hidden sector monopoles can be light and their electric minicharges could thus be testable in current and near future low-energy experiments.