A new look at the Dirac quantization condition

Abstract

The angular momentum of any quantum system should be unambiguously quantized. We show that such a quantization fails for a pure Dirac monopole due to a previously overlooked field angular momentum from the monopole-electric charge system coming from the magnetic field of the Dirac string and the electric field of the charge. Applying the point-splitting method to the monopole-charge system yields a total angular momentum which obeys the standard angular momentum algebra, but which is gauge variant. In contrast it is possible to properly quantize the angular momentum of a topological ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole plus charge. This implies that pure Dirac monopoles are not viable – only ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopoles are theoretically consistent with angular momentum quantization and gauge invariance.