Speaker: John Terning
Title: Abelian Instantons
Room: 3024
Host: John Terning
Abstract: It is usually assumed that 4D instantons can only arise in non-Abelian theories. One can, however, explicitly construct instantons for QED in the background of a Dirac monopole. This is the low-energy effective field theory for fermions interacting with a 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole. This theory posesses both a topological instanton number and 't Hooft zero modes. I will show how such instantons provide the underlying mechanism for the Callan-Rubakov process: monopole-catalyzed baryon decay with a cross section that saturates the unitarity bound.
