The bibliography compilation on magnetic monopoles is updated to include references from 2000 till mid 2011. It is intended to contain all experimental papers on the subject and only the theoretical papers which have specific experimental implications.
There has been a big effort in the past twenty years with at least a couple of generations of experiments which searched for supermassive GUT magnetic monopoles in the cosmic radiation. Here a short review of these searches is given, together with
a brief description of the theoretical framework and of the detection techniques.
The SLIM experiment was a large array of nuclear track detectors located at the Chacaltaya high altitude Laboratory (5230 m a.s.l.). The detector was in particular sensitive to Intermediate Mass Magnetic Monopoles, with masses 10^5 < M <10^{12} GeV.
From the analysis of the full detector exposed for more than 4 years a flux upper limit of 1.3 x 10^{-15} cm^{-2} s^{-1} sr^{-1} for downgoing fast Intermediate Mass Monopoles was established at the 90% C.L.
We present simulations of one magnetic monopole interacting with multiple magnetic singularities. Three-dimensional plots of the energy density are constructed from explicit solutions to the Bogomolny equation obtained by Blair, Cherkis, and Durcan.
Animations follow trajectories derived from collective coordinate mechanics on the multi-centered Taub--NUT monopole moduli space. We supplement our numerical results with a complete analytic treatment of the single-defect case.
We describe the internal composition of a topologically stable monopole carrying a magnetic charge of $6pi/e$ that arises from the spontaneous breaking of the trinification symmetry $SU(3)_ctimes SU(3)_Ltimes SU(3)_R$ ($G$). Since this monopole carri
es no color magnetic charge, a charge of $6pi/e$ is required by the Dirac quantization condition. The breaking of $G$ to the Standard Model occurs in a number of steps and yields the desired topologically stable monopole (magnetic baryon), consisting of three confined monopoles. The confined monopoles (magnetic quarks) each carry a combination of Coulomb magnetic flux and magnetic flux tubes, and therefore they do not exist as isolated states. We also display a more elaborate configuration (fang necklace) composed of these magnetic quarks. In contrast to the $SU(5)$ monopole which is superheavy and carries a magnetic charge of $2pi/e$ as well as color magnetic charge, the trinification monopole may have mass in the TeV range, in which case it may be accessible at the LHC and its planned upgrades.
We show that axions interacting with abelian gauge fields obtain a potential from loops of magnetic monopoles. This is a consequence of the Witten effect: the axion field causes the monopoles to acquire an electric charge and alters their energy spec
trum. The axion potential can also be understood as a type of instanton effect due to a Euclidean monopole worldline winding around its dyon collective coordinate. We calculate this effect, which has features in common with both nonabelian instantons and Euclidean brane instantons. To provide consistency checks, we argue that this axion potential vanishes in the presence of a massless charged fermion and that it is robust against the presence of higher-derivative corrections in the effective Lagrangian. Finally, as a first step toward connecting with particle phenomenology and cosmology, we discuss the regime in which this potential is important in determining the dark matter relic abundance in a hidden sector containing an abelian gauge group, monopoles, and axions.