Scattering Amplitudes of Fermions on Monopoles

TL;DR

This paper derives explicit scattering amplitudes for massless fermions interacting with magnetic monopoles in SU(2) and SU(5) models, revealing processes relevant for monopole catalysis of proton decay.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit expressions for fermion-monopole scattering amplitudes in these models, including complex processes with multiple fermions and solitons.

Findings

Amplitudes for single fermion scattering on monopoles are derived.

Processes involving multiple fermions and solitons are characterized.

Relevance to monopole catalysis of proton decay is established.

Abstract

We consider scattering processes involving massless fermions and 't Hooft-Polyakov magnetic monopoles in a minimal SU(2) model and in the Grand Unified SU(5) theory. We construct expressions for on-shell amplitudes for these processes in the $J=0$ partial wave using the spinor helicity basis consisting of single-particle and pairwise helicities. These processes are unsuppressed and are relevant for the monopole catalysis of proton decay. The amplitudes for the minimal processes involving a single fermion scattering on a monopole in the initial state and half-fermion solitons in the final state are presented for the first time and are used to obtain the amplitudes for processes involving more fermions in the initial state and integer fermion numbers in the final state. A number of such anomalous and non-anomalous processes, along with their amplitude expressions, are written down for the $SU(5)$ GUT model.