Magnetic monopoles from heavy ion collisions and neutron stars

Oliver Gould (Imperial College London)

Elementary magnetic monopoles have never been experimentally observed but there are credible theoretical reasons to believe that they may nonetheless exist. For one, their presence would imply the observed quantisation of electric charge. In this talk, I will show that the strong magnetic fields and high temperatures present in heavy ion collisions and around neutron stars are capable of efficiently producing magnetic monopoles, via a strongly coupled dual Schwinger process. On the other hand, I outline serious theoretical doubts that collisions of "small" particles, such as protons, could ever produce magnetic monopoles, even at arbitrarily high energies. As a consequence, heavy ion collisions offer the best hope to produce elementary magnetic monopoles or, in their absence, to constrain their properties.