Varying Alpha Monopoles

Abstract

We study static magnetic monopoles in the context of varying alpha theories and show that there is a group of models for which the t'Hooft-Polyakov solution is still valid. Nevertheless, in general static magnetic monopole solutions in varying alpha theories depart from the classical t'Hooft-Polyakov solution with the electromagnetic energy concentrated inside the core seeding spatial variations of the fine structure constant. We show that Equivalence Principle constraints impose tight limits on the allowed variations of alpha induced by magnetic monopoles which confirms the difficulty to generate significant large-scale spatial variation of the fine structure constant found in previous works. This is true even in the most favorable case where magnetic monopoles are the source for these variations.

8 pages, 10 figures; Version to be published in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (5)

• Quintessence Models and the Cosmological Evolution of alpha
• Cosmological Bounds on Spatial Variations of Physical Constants
• Numerical and asymptotic analysis of the 't Hooft-Polyakov magnetic monopole
• Can we test Dark Energy with Running Fundamental Constants ?
• Cosmic strings in Bekenstein-type models

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Is there Correlation between Fine Structure and Dark Energy Cosmic Dipoles?
• New bounds on macroscopic scalar-field topological defects from non-transient signatures due to environmental dependence and spatial variations of the fundamental constants
• Evolution of the fine-structure constant in the non-linear regime
• Constraints on scalar coupling to electromagnetism
• Robust laboratory limits on a cosmological spatial gradient in the electromagnetic fine-structure constant from accelerometer experiments
• Gravitational Effects of Varying Alpha Strings
• Dilatonic Topological Defects in 3+1 Dimensions and their Embeddings
• Cosmological Consequences of Topological Defects: Dark Energy and Varying Fundamental Constants