The search for magnetic monopoles

Abstract

Electricity and magnetism appear everywhere in the modern world and form the basis of most of our technology. Therefore, it would be natural to assume that they are already fully understood and no longer pose unanswered fundamental physics questions. Indeed, for most practical purposes they are perfectly well described by classical electrodynamics, as formulated by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864. At a deeper level, a consistent quantum mechanical account is given by quantum electrodynamics, part of the standard model of particle physics. The theory works so well that it predicts the magnetic dipole moment of the electron accurately to 10 significant figures. Nevertheless, there is still an elementary aspect of electromagnetism that we do not understand: the question of magnetic monopoles.