On the strong and weak effects in the s-wave monopole-fermion interactions

Abstract

Neglecting the masses of light fermions at small distances and corrections due to higher angular momentum excitations and heavy fermions, we show that strong and weak effects do not forbid the monopole catalysis of proton decay. We develop a simple bag-like model of a proton with a monopole sitting at its center and estimate the proton lifetime. We show that the monopole catalysis is not allowed in a variant of the SU(5) grand unified theory, so this process is not characteristic to all GUTs.