13 July, 2009

Creating magnetic monopoles in table-top experiments

An interesting article appeared today among PRL Editor's suggestions: Ville Pietilä and Mikko Möttönen "Creation of Dirac Monopoles in Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensates". These guys theoretically describe how one may use a magnetic field to create a magnetic monopole in a Bose-Einstein condensed atomic gas. This paper was also highlighted in Physics, so there is nothing left for me to write about.

The only thing I wonder is what happens if one uses molecular Bose condensate, or a subcritical, but non-condensed quantum gas, and uses the laser field instead of the magnetic one? Or, even worse, uses an electric field to manipulate condensed polar molecules?

Also, a few months ago I came across a paper, where some graphene-based system was proposed to "simulate" a Dirac monopole. But, unfortunately, I cannot remember the link...

2 comments:

nc1984 said...

Hi Misha

This idea of creating magnetic monopoles even seems to be more stronger on this new class of materials... the topological insulator.
You can check this Science article, Vol. 323. no. 5918, pp. 1184 - 1187
DOI: 10.1126/science.1167747,
"Inducing a Magnetic Monopole with Topological Surface States".
Also Bilayer Graphene is a topological insulator.


... It looks like people are still fascinated by Dirac's dream.... ehehehehe


Keep on going.

Best Regards

Nuno Couto

Lemeshko said...

Thanks for the links, Nuno!