Monopole Pair Creation in Energetic Collisions: Is It Possible?

Abstract

It is suggested that monopole-antimonopole pair production initiated by pointlike particles (electrons, quarks) has widely different cross sections in the two cases of "point-like" and composite monopoles, respectively. Production of 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles is expected to be suppressed by a hugh factor, \ensuremath{\ge}${10}^{30}$. Furthermore, astrophysical evidence is presented suggesting that monopoles with ${m}_{m}\ensuremath{\approx}{10}^{4}$ GeV/${\mathit{c}}^{2}$ cannot be point-like.