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It is a quasi particle that results from the collective state of electrons in solid matter. It is not really a monopole, since it is necessarily connected by a
by fhars 17y ago
It is a quasi particle that results from the collective state of electrons in solid matter. It is not really a monopole, since it is necessarily connected by a flux tube (no Back to the Future jokes, please) to an opposite pole. If you integrate the flux over a closed sphere, you still get a total flux of zero. Only if you leave a small hole where the flux tube leaves the sphere around your "pole" you get something that looks like a monopole, with things like the inverse distance behaviour you see for electric and gravitational fields.
This is similar to the field you see near the ends of strong long and thin conventional magnets (where the matter of the magnet plays the role of the flux tube).
So this is a very interesting discovery in the field of solid state physics, but any connections to elementary particle physics you might think of when you hear about the discovery of a magnetic monopole are wrong.
- wwalker3 17y agoThe investigators themselves are slightly more temperate than Science Daily. They used the name "classical magnetic monopoles" in a presentation a couple of years back (http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/ClaudioCastelnovo/Talks/070809_Trieste.pdf http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/ClaudioCastelnovo/...), and explicitly said they're not elementary particles (though they did bury that bit towards the middle of the presentation).
- jcdreads 17y agoRight. Divergence of B is still zero.
- Confusion 17y agoHowever, the question is whether a 'real' magnetic monopole must necessarily be a fundamental particle. Perhaps this is one of the only ways in which the properties of a magnetic monopole manifest themselves.
- lutorm 17y agoYou can't make a field with divergence out of divergenceless components, so no, it has to be something that's not in normal matter.