- Dyon
In
physics , a dyon is a hypothetical particle with both electric and magnetic charges. A dyon with a zero electric charge is usually referred to as amagnetic monopole . Many Grand Unified Theories predict the existence of both magnetic monopoles and dyons.Dyons in Dirac's theory
In
Dirac's theory , magnetic monopole is a point-like object which serves as a source of themagnetic field . It is possible to consider a more complicated object which is a source of both theelectric field and the magnetic field. Dyons are allowed, but not required by this theory. In quantum theory, the allowed values of the electric and magnetic charges are constrained by theDirac-Zwanziger-Schwinger quantization condition : if there exists both a particle with electric charge and magnetic charge and a particle with electric charge and magnetic charge , then one must have:,
where "n" is an integer, "c" is the
speed of light , and isPlanck's constant . This condition follows from the requirement that thewavefunction describing the system of these two particles be univalued (more precisely, it should be a well-defined section of a suitable line bundle on the configuration space of the two particles).Dyons in Grand Unified Theories
In Grand Unified Theories, dyons can be regarded as excited states of magnetic monopoles. More precisely, the classical magnetic monopole solution has a circle-valued degree of freedom whose semiclassical
quantization leads to a tower of states of increasingelectric charge . Thus Grand Unified Theories can be said to predict dyons. In particular, it is possible to predict the masses of dyons.
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