Title: An introduction to magnetic monopoles for novices
Abstract: A magnetic monopole is a hypothetical isolated magnetic charge, or “static magnetism”. Static electricity and electrically charged particles are ubiquitous in Nature and well understood, but all observed magnets have both north and south poles and no overall magnetic charge. In this talk I will briefly explore why we don’t see magnetic monopoles in Nature – but why perhaps we should. I will give a non-technical overview of the theory of classical electromagnetism to highlight its elegant geometric structure. I will describe what a rigorous mathematical model of a magnetic monopole looks like using the geometry of fibre bundles, touching on links to topics such as cohomology, homotopy groups and knot theory, and conclude with an interpretation of a monopole as the mathematically well-known Hopf bundle.