Magnetic Monopoles and Duality Symmetry Breaking in Maxwell's Electrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper explores how to break duality symmetry in Maxwell's electrodynamics, suppress magnetic monopole interactions at low energy, and reveals a connection to an SU(2) duality gauge group.

Contribution

It introduces a method to break duality symmetry, suppress magnetic monopoles, and links local duality symmetry to an SU(2)D gauge group.

Findings

Magnetic monopole interactions can be suppressed at low energies.

Invariance under duality transformations addresses the zero-charge problem.

Local duality symmetry combined with U(1)EM leads to an SU(2)D gauge group.

Abstract

It is shown how to break the symmetry of a Lagrangian with duality symmetry between electric and magnetic monopoles, so that at low energy, electric monopole interactions continue to be observed but magnetic monopole interactions become very highly suppressed to the point of effectively vanishing. The "zero-charge" problem of source-free electrodynamics is solved by requiring invariance under continuous, local, duality transformations, while local duality symmetry combined with local U(1)EM gauge symmetry leads naturally and surprisingly to an SU(2)D duality gauge group.