- Open Access
Magnetic monopoles and exotic states in
Phys. Rev. D 112, 075013 – Published 6 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/y7cd-ds58
Abstract
In the Pati-Salam gauge symmetry (4-2-2, for short), the observed quarks and leptons of each family reside in the bi-fundamental representations (4,2,1) and . There exist, however, the fundamental representations (4,1,1), (1,2,1), and (1,1,2) and their Hermitian conjugates, which show the presence, in principle, of yet to be discovered color triplets that carry electric charge , and color singlet particles with charges of . These standard model charges are in full accord with the fact that the 4-2-2 model predicts the presence of a topologically stable, finite energy magnetic monopole that carries two quanta of Dirac magnetic charge, i.e., , as well as color magnetic charge that is screened beyond the quark confinement scale. The 4-2-2 model, therefore, predicts the existence of exotic baryons, mesons, and leptons that carry fractional () electric charges. Since their origin lies in the fundamental representations of 4-2-2, these exotic particles may turn out to be relatively light, in the TeV mass range or so. The 4-2-2 magnetic monopole mass depends on the 4-2-2 symmetry breaking scale, which is approximately 100 TeV.
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