Ground state of nonassociative hydrogen and upper bounds on the magnetic charge of elementary particles (original) (raw)

Formulations of magnetic monopoles in a Hilbert-space formulation of quantum mechanics require Dirac's quantization condition of magnetic charge, which implies a large value that can easily be ruled out for elementary particles by standard atomic spectroscopy. However, an algebraic formulation of nonassociative quantum mechanics is mathematically consistent with fractional magnetic charges of small values. Here, spectral properties in nonassociative quantum mechanics are derived and applied to the ground state of hydrogen with a magnetically charged nucleus. The resulting energy leads to new strong upper bounds for the magnetic charge of various elementary particles that can appear as the nucleus of hydrogenlike atoms, such as the muon or the antiproton.