Magnetic monopoles in non-compact QED- is there a phase transition?

Abstract

The existence of the monopole condensation transition reported by Kocić et al. [1] in non-compact, quenched QED is tested. No phase transition is found. This shows that divergence of the “monopole susceptibility” introduced by Hands and Wensley [2] is not a reliable indicator of second order phase transitions. In view of these results I discuss claims [3] that the chiral phase transition seen in QED with fermions [3, 4] is a lattice artefact driven by monopole condensation.