The theoretical behaviour of a magnetic monopole in a wilson cloud chamber

Abstract

Dirac has suggested that the quantization of electric charge could be explained by the existence of magnetic monopoles. In view of this hypothesis, this paper investigates what theoretically would be the behaviour of such monopoles in a Wilson cloud chamber. The treatment, which for simplicity is basically classical, closely follows Bohr's work on the decrease of velocity and ionization properties of α- and β-particles, and expressions are derived for the rate of decrease of energy and the number of ion-pairs produced per centimetre by a monopole passing through a gas. These expressions are then discussed with particular reference to the case of heavy particles, and the main differences between them and the corresponding expressions for α-particles both as to range and ionization are indicated; these differences can be summarized by saying that monopoles have much shorter paths, but create many more ion-pairs per centimetre than α-particles. Also, the very sharp increase in the ionization at the end of the path of an electric particle is missing, the ionization for the monopole decreasing to a small amount near the end of the path.