The ground state of non-associative hydrogen and upper bounds on the magnetic charge of elementary particles

Martin Bojowald, Suddhasattwa Brahma, Umut Buyukcam, Martijn van Kuppeveld

Published 2020-11-15Version 1

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 non-associative quantum mechanics is mathematically consistent with fractional magnetic charges of small values. Here, spectral properties in non-associative quantum mechanics are derived, 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 hydrogen-like atoms, such as the muon or the antiproton.