Electric charge from spontaneous breaking of symmetry

Abstract

The duality symmetry present in the Maxwell equations admitting magnetic charges is gauged using a complex scalar field. In this new model, electromagnetic charge arises because of a "Yukawa" type coupling of the matter with the scalar field. Considering an interacting Dirac field we show that spontaneous symmetry breaking in the scalar field sector leads at low energy to the reduction of this theory to the usual electrodynamics without magnetic charges. The notion of electric charge as a coupling constant arises very naturally in this model. Higgs mechanism in this model gives rise to the existence of a scalar and a vector field, both real and massive.