Magnetic Monopoles

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XVIII

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2. Dirac Monopole

   1. Magnetic Monopole in Classical Theory

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 3-25

   2. The Electron-Monopole System:Quantum-Mechanical Interaction

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 27-65

   3. Topological Roots of the Abelian Monopole

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 67-107

   4. Abelian Monopole: Relativistic Quantum Theory

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 109-137

3. Monopole in Non-Abelian Gauge Theories

   1. ’t Hooft-Polyakov Monopole

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 141-172

   2. Multimonopole Configurations

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 173-239

   3. SU(2) Monopole in Quantum Theory

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 241-274

   4. Monopoles Beyond SU(2) Group

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 275-317

   5. Monopoles and the Problem of Confinement

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 319-358

   6. Fermions in the Field of Non-Abelian Monopole and Rubakov—Callan Effect

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 359-403

4. Supersymmetric Monopoles

   1. Construction of Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theories

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 407-435

   2. Magnetic Monopoles in the N = 2 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 437-463

   3. Seiberg—Witten Solution of N = 2 SUSY Yang—Mills Theory

      • Yakov M. Shnir

      Pages 465-499

5. Back Matter

   Pages 501-532

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“One would be surprised if Nature had made no use of it.” P.A.M. Dirac According to some dictionaries, one meaning of the notion of “beauty” is “symmetry”. Probably, beauty is not entirely “in the eye of the beholder”. It seemstoberelatedtothesymmetryoftheobject.Fromaphysicalviewpoint, this de?nition is very attractive: it allows us to describe a central concept of theoretical physics over the last two centuries as being a quest for higher symmetry of Nature. The more symmetric the theory, the more beautiful it looks. Unfortunately, our imperfect (at least at low-energy scale) world is full of nasty broken symmetries. This has impelled physicists to try to understand how this happens. In some cases, it is possible to reveal the mechanism of violationandhowthesymmetrymayberecovered;thenourpictureofNature becomes a bit more beautiful. One of the problems of the broken symmetry that we see is that, while there are electric charges in our world, their counterparts, magnetic mo- poles, have not been found. Thus, in the absence of the monopoles, the s- metry between electric and magnetic quantities is lost. Can this symmetry be regained? In the history of theoretical physics, the hypothesis about the possible existence of a magnetic monopole has no analogy. There is no other purely theoretical construction that has managed not only to survive, without any experimental evidence, in the course of more than a century, but has also remained the focus of intensive research by generations of physicists.

• Confinement
• Magnetic Monopoles
• Potential
• electrodynamics
• gauge theories
• mechanics
• quantum theory
• supersymmetry
• theoretical physics

From the reviews of the first edition:

"The modern era of the monopolic theory started in 1974 when Hooft and, independently, Polyakov found monopole solutions in quantum field theory … . This … is the subject of the carefully designed book by Shnir. It is written mainly for researchers and advanced students in theoretical physics and is to my knowledge the first coherent presentation of the subject." (Gert Roepstorff, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1084, 2006)

• Institute of Physics, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany

  Yakov M. Shnir

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