Can Coffee Cups and Donuts connect Magnetic

Monopoles and Solenoids?

Souparna Nath

While Coffee Cups seem to be pretty concrete - sustainable to heat of the coffee inside, Donuts
seem nowhere to be concrete and would easily get wet and rip apart once hot coffee is poured.
Clearly these are different objects right? Although it might not be that surprising to
mathematicians (and also to some physicists), it definitely is a gamechanger when one comes
to know that they are the same! However, what is really mesmerizing even to the experts is how
this coffee cup and donut relationship can link a hypothetical unattainable entity called Magnetic
Monopoles with a daily laboratory obtainable Solenoid!

Why are Electric Charges Discrete?

To answer this simple yet difficult to approach question, it is better to break it into several parts
and tackle them one by one.

Charge

Most of you are familiar with the concept of charge. It is one of the earliest concepts in physics
ever introduced in any standard textbook in middle school. We encounter charge as a physical
property that sometimes repels and sometimes attracts, that is to say, we define charge by its
interaction with other charges and not by what it actually is. One might also recall that charges
are always discrete. In simpler terms, you have 1 charge, 2 charges, 3 charges and so on but
never 1.5 or 2.3 charges. As an elementary kid I had, like you, always wondered why does
charge have no independent definition and why are they discrete. Maybe we would get to know
these issues later on. So have we found any? Partly yes, partly no!

The independent definition of charge is still something that may be out

there in the universe but nobody knows. Who knows, probably
one of the readers of this article may find an answer in the future and
lead us further. Until then we have to be satisfied with what we have.
As to the discreteness of charges, well we do have an answer. In fact several such answers, not
all of which have been experimentally determined. One such hypothetical answer is what we
would be dealing with in this article.

Magnets and Monopoles

Magnets are fascinating. You do not need a formal training in school to know how a magnet
behaves (well you definitely need to do a proper course in
Quantum Field Theory to know what exactly is responsible for
magnets to behave the way they do. What I mean here is to
observe how a magnet behaves).
The end marked N (North Pole) of a bar magnet always repels
the end marked N of another magnet, while it attracts the end
marked S (South Pole) of the other magnet. Left to itself, it
aligns along the geographic North-South direction due to the
presence of the Earth’s magnetic field lines. These are some
observations every careful observer has made once in their lifetime.
However, you probably might have also learned that magnet cannot have only one pole, say
only N or S. If you try to break a magnet into half,
each broken portion will “gain” opposite poles as
illustrated. This is something marvelous. It troubled
observers from ages, and still bothers some
physicists. Why can’t you obtain a single pole -
technically called a Magnetic Monopole - just like you
can have a single charge ?
If you are searching for an ultimate answer here,
let me inform that you won’t. Nobody knows why one
cannot have them. The even more irritating part is that physics does not prevent Monopoles to
exist. It would be very happy to do so (in fact it would explain the discreteness of charge as we
shall do here). Besides this unsatisfactory answer, at least a motivation can be given as to how
we can guarantee that we did not find one.
Lines of Force

If a single positive charge is placed in vacuum, with nothing else interacting, it just sits there
doing nothing. Now think of fixing this charge (call it the ‘source charge’), and bringing another
positive charge close (the ‘test’ charge). This charge will be repelled for sure, but the strength of
repulsion will depend on how far the charge is away from the source and the direction in which
the force will act is also different for different positions of the test charge. One could then in
principle sketch imaginary lines that are spread throughout the space around the source. The
direction of these lines would indicate the direction of force on the test charge, and the density
of lines would indicate the strength of the force. These lines are thus rightly called Lines of
Force or Field Lines.

The figure on the left shows the Lines of Force or the Field Lines
produced due to a positive source charge. The lines spread radially
outward since that is the direction of force acting on a positive test
charge. Note the lines are becoming less dense indicating decreasing
strength.

The figure on the left shows the Lines of Force or the Field Lines
produced now due to a negative source charge. The lines converge
radially inwards since that is the direction of force acting on a positive
test charge. Note the lines are becoming less dense indicating
decreasing strength.

If the source charge is negative - but of the same value - it will feel the same strength but this
time, it will be attracted instead of being repelled.

Magnetism as closed field lines

Consider the case of a positive charge and a negative charge

kept at a distance ‘d’ from each other. This is known as an electric
dipole - electric since they are made of electric charges and dipole since there are two of them.
The field lines are now bent since the direction of force on a test charge are not radial anymore.
It depends on the combined force due to the positive and negative charge. As one may observe,
these lines originate from the positive charge and end on the negative charge.

This is a crucial observation. Assume now that you keep on

decreasing the length between these two charges, until it is so
close that almost the two charges ‘sit’ on each other. This
makes the electric dipole appear like a single object but instead
of the field lines spreading out endlessly, it rather originates and
terminates at the same point.

With this idea visualized, we can talk about magnetic monopoles. Magnetic monopoles would
not behave any different from an electric charge. It would also have a similar lines of force that
spreads out endlessly, except that in reality, one never observes such magnetic field lines.

All experiments reveal that magnetic field lines are just

‘closed’ lines of force. Simply speaking, these lines always
originate from and terminate to the same source. Drawing a
similar analogy then, you can actually imagine the magnetic
poles to be always ‘sticking’ to each other just like the electric
dipole. This explains why one cannot break a magnet into
separate monopoles - each slice of the bar magnet has a
North and a South Pole sticking to each other - hence even if
one breaks the magnet into very thin slices, each slice would
still have one North and one South Pole.

Note however that the possibility of monopoles existing in the literature has nowhere been ruled
out. It is just that observation has never revealed open magnetic field lines of force.
Interference of Waves:-

If you have ever thrown a stone at a lake, you would see ripples forming that spreads out in
bands of concentric circles. Throw two such stones at the same
time, and you would observe the ripples interfering with each
other to form beautiful patterns. This is a signature indicating
wavelike behaviour.

This happens because at some point, the crest of the wave

matches with the crest of another wave (in physics jargon, it
is called ‘In Phase’ or ‘Constructive’) thus doubling the height
of the wave, while in other regions, crest of a wave matches
with trough of another wave (called ‘Out of Phase’ or
‘Destructive’) thus cancelling each other’s height.

An experiment designed to properly capture this wavelike behaviour is the famous (and the
infamous) Double Slit experiment. A rectangular surface with two slits is placed between a
screen and a wave generating
source. The waves generated by
the source travel to the slit where
they bifurcate and two new waves
originate from each slit. These
waves interfere with each other to
produce a pattern in the screen.
The pattern reveals that at some
places, (like the ones at the centre
of the screen), the intensity of
waves reaching is larger than at
other places. Places that are completely dark are the regions where the waves destroy each
other completely. Such an experiment can be used to check whether something behaves like a
wave or a particle (the latter is explained below).

Electrons are both, Waves and Particles - Enter Quantum Mechanics

Not long after the discovery of electrons by J.J. Thompson, the behaviour of electrons - and
many other fundamental particles like protons and neutrons - was very difficult to predict
classically. By classically, one means by using the well established laws of Sir Isaac Newton.
Several experiments invalidated lots of prejudices physicists held about particles and reformed
our way of thinking. Probably the most notable experiment was electrons behaving like waves.

Unlike waves, repeating the Double Slit experiment

by shooting lots of particles would not yield such a
pattern. Instead, there would be two bright spots just
behind the slits where the particles would
accumulate. This was what was indeed observed for
all but electrons. Electrons contradicting everyone’s
belief produced a pattern and displayed characteristics exactly similar to waves. The undeniable
conclusion was that electrons also waves besides being particles. This led to the beginning of a
new branch of physics called Quantum Mechanics.

Quantization of Orbits

With electrons behaving like waves, there were a lot of fascinating physics that followed. One
such is the impossibility of electrons to be orbiting the nucleus at any arbitrary distance. This
strange result can actually be understood very simply.

Consider waves on a circle. If you start drawing them,

after 360 degrees of rotation, you would finally end up
at the same point where you started; but now you have
two important choices.
 1) Upon returning, the initial wave and the final wave are ‘In Phase’.
2) Upon returning, the initial wave and the final wave are ‘Out of Phase’.

While option 1 is acceptable, option 2 is dangerous since it would actually destroy the entire
wave in 2 complete turns. As the wavelike behaviour is fundamentally connected to the
existence of a particle, destroying itself completely means destroying its own existence! This
forces one to conclude that electrons cannot be orbiting circles of any radius. It can only orbit
certain specific orbits where the waves do not destroy each other.

So consider an orbit of radius ​r​. If and only if the wavelength of the wave is an integer multiple
of the circumference of the circle - in which case the waves will be ‘In Phase’ after a complete
turn - can the orbit with that particular radius be allowed, leading one to a previously unthinkable
conclusion that the orbits must be discrete - or more technically - quantized.

Quantization of Charge

We have finally reached what wanted to discuss. Assume that a Magnetic Monopole exists
whose magnetic charge is ​m​. Now there is a subtle difficulty here to explain in plain English
without delving into the mathematics, certainly though a picture can be provided.

Wherever monopoles sit, the space around them could be

imagined to become a “Solid Sphere with a Tunnel” through the
centre. If an electron of electric charge ​e,​ orbits the Monopole ​m
once around this tunnel, the electron wave would not be ‘In
Phase’ anymore. The heights of the initial and final wave would
differ by a factor proportional to the product of ​e​ and ​m​.

The amazing part here though is that the difference between the heights (called ‘Phase
difference’ of the wave) is independent of the radius of the orbit. It does not depend on how
large the orbit of the electron is, the phase difference is always the same. This has a deep
consequence for it implies that if this phase difference is not an integer multiple of the
wavelength - for which the waves are ‘In Phase’ - the electron would always destroy itself and
would never exist anywhere! Now this is obviously not true, for we know electrons (and other
electric charges) exist quite happily.

Hence the only feasible conclusion is that the phase difference is always some integer multiple
of the wavelength. Rewriting what we have said mathematically, ​e m ​∝ n λ,
with λ denoting the wavelength and n denoting an integer.

One could stare and ponder what this profound equation implies! ​e​ is the electric charge, ​m​ is
the magnetic charge, λ is the electron’s wavelength which is constant. So, even if 1 magnetic
Monopole is found, then one could easily conclude that ​e ​ = n λ/1, meaning that “Electric
Charges can only be Integer Multiple of some Constant Value” (say, λ). Isn’t this what we have
been asking for since the beginning? This result actually explains why the existence of magnetic
monopoles would lead to electric charges being discrete.

What happens if an electron loops around a solenoid?

Solenoids have been known since the inception of modern magnetism probably because it is
one of the easiest designs to obtain an uniform magnetic field.

Infinitely long Solenoid

A solenoid is simply an electric wire wound around some

imaginary axis, extending up to a certain height. In case of an
infinitely long solenoid, the height of the coil is assumed to be
infinitely long. The beauty of the ideal current carrying
infinitely long solenoid is that the magnetic field is that it
produces uniform magnetic field inside and absolutely no
magnetic field outside. This can be observed easily.
 The magnetic field due to a single current carrying circular loop is illustrated.
Observe that the magnetic field lines start inside the loop, rise up, encircle
every point of the loop once, and then return inside the loop from below. As
we had noticed earlier, the North and South Poles cannot not be separated
from each other.

Now if two loops are considered, the magnetic field lines outside and
near the centre of both coils cancel out. While the field lines inside
actually add up almost everywhere.
Following this scheme, if multiple loops are consecutively added, the
field lines outside would start cancelling almost everywhere, while the
ones inside would keep on adding up. Ideally extending the number of
loops to infinity would then indeed produce magnetic field lines only
inside the loop and none outside.

Electric Potential

If you have ever observed two containers

containing water, with one of them having water
level higher than the other, you know that upon
connecting the containers through a hollow pipe,
water flows from the container with higher water
level to the container with lower level. Similarly,
connecting a hot body with a cold body allows
heat to flow from the hotter body to a colder body;
but what drives it to flow in one preferred direction
and not the other?
Its “Energy”. Energy is the capacity to do “Work”. The container with water level higher applies
more pressure (equivalently, force) on the base than the one with lower water level, due to
which water gushes out faster through the former than the latter. So, if the water gushing out is
made to fall on the surface of a ball, water gushing through the former hits the ball harder than
water through the latter.The container with higher water level thus can do more work than one
with lower water level. So is true for the hotter body since all the atoms of that body vibrate
faster than the atoms of the cold body. The hotter body has more energy than the colder body.

Potential is just the measure of this energy of each body, the capacity to do work. And any
potential difference yields a flow of something from higher potential to lower potential.

In presence of a positive source charge, another positive

charge has to do work against the repulsion of the source
charge. Electric potential is simply the measure of this
capacity of the positive charge to do work against the
source charge.
This potential can be pictorially represented as a single
value (here represented by a color, with black being the
lowest and white the highest) at each point surrounding
the electric potential. The value suggests the amount of
work needed to be done against the source to reach that
point from infinity.

Virtual Photons

[This could be a little mainstream . If it's difficult to follow, it can simply be skipped without loss
of continuity].

Similar charges and similar poles of magnets repels. A question that naturally follows is how! As
said earlier, it requires extensive knowledge of Quantum Field Theory. We can however sketch
a simple understanding of the phenomena happening. Imagine two people, A and B standing at
some distance apart from each other, and throwing basketball at each other. When A throws the
ball, he feels a push backwards (recoils) and moves a certain further
distance away from B. When the ball is caught by B, it had a
momentum which is now transferred into the hands of B. This pushes B
slightly backwards increasing his distance even further from A. The
same process repeats when B throws the ball.
Extending this analogy to similar charges or similar poles of magnets,
one can say that the repulsion happens due to exchange of something
that is analogous to the ball. This entity carries the momentum from
one particle to the second and vice versa. This something turns out to
be particles of light called photons with the only difference is that these
particles of light can never in principle be visible directly or indirectly.
Hence the name, ‘Virtual Photons’.
[If the last line bothers you, do not worry, it still bothers many of the
brilliant minds].

Magnetic Potential

Potential for most objects in our physical world turns out to be associated with quantifying the
capacity to do work - energy. However, magnetic systems need a little different kind of potential.
The principle albeit remains the same, this time it is
not the capacity to do work but the capacity to
exchange momentum (via virtual photons). When the
North Pole of a magnet is brought near the North Pole
of a ‘source magnet’, it repels. The capacity of the
magnet to exchange momentum with the source
magnet (via virtual photons) is termed as the Magnetic
Potential. Unlike work or energy however, momentum
depends on the direction of motion (the direction in
which the basketball is thrown in the previous
analogy). So, instead of just denoting every point surrounding the magnet by a single value, it
has to be denoted by a value and a directional arrow as illustrated. It displays the magnetic
→
potential for a current carrying infinitely long solenoid with the magnetic potential denoted as​ A .
Measurement Problem

One of the fascinating consequences of particles behaving like waves was already seen when
we talked about Quantization of the Orbits. However, particles do not just behave as waves.
They also sometimes behave as particles as their name itself suggests.
There is a reason the Double Slit Experiment was not only famous but also infamous. The same
experiment that displayed electrons behaving as waves also displays electrons behaving as
particles! Indeed. If the experimentalist now decides to “trace the slit through which the electron
passes”, then the entire interference pattern disappears and only two vertical lines appear, as if
the electrons never behaved like waves. It is as if the very act of measuring the slit through
which the electron passes collapses the wave of the electron into a particle.

The figure on the right illustrates the Double Slit

experiment of Photons (particles of light) with and
without the detector. In the absence of detectors,
the photons behave as waves, interfere with each
other and produces the interference pattern. With
the detectors present,the path of the photon can
be traced i.e. a measurement is made. So, the
photons now behave as bunch of particles, and
the pattern disappears.

This is albeit strange! Popularly known as the “Measurement Problem”, this problem is yet
unsolved for over 100 years although many progress in this field have been made. Once again,
it calls for a smart reader to help us in the future.

Weak Measurement

The earliest interpretation of the Measurement Problem claimed that the wave of the electron
(or any other fundamental particle) instantaneously collapses into a particle as soon as it is
measured. It remained silent about what exactly was the measuring device made up of.
People started doubting not only the instantaneous collapse hypothesis, but also the role played
by the measuring device. Questions like - “What would happen if we could somehow start
measuring but stop before the wave completely collapses. Can one then observe how the
electron behaves in this intermediate stage?” - bothered physicists, until finally they decided to
probe them via experiments.

One such experiment was to observe the effect on the pattern in the Double Slit experiment of
electrons, but instead of introducing any direct path tracing device, this experiment introduced a
current carrying infinitely long solenoid just in between the two slits. The goal was to make two
observations -

1) The magnetic field outside the solenoid

was zero. So any change in pattern (as a
result of interaction) cannot be due to the
magnetic field. It has to be due to the
magnetic potential. One would
conclusively infer the physical existence of
the magnetic potential.

2) If any interaction infinitely collapses the

wave, then the pattern would completely
disappear turning it into two vertical lines as observed for pure particles. Any alternative
to this result would conclusively infer the falsity of the Instantaneous Collapse Theory.

The result of both these observations were astonishing. Not only was magnetic potential given a
physical existence, even the pattern did not disappear! It merely shifted (as illustrated by Δx in
the figure above), showing that interaction (equivalently measurement) need not kill the wave
always. Only when the measuring device is pretty complicated allowing multiple interactions to
occur at the same time, do the wave collapse into a particle. This effect of pattern shifting is
much popularly known as the Aharonov-Bohm effect and it sort of justifies the name Weak
Measurement.
Quantization of Charge, Once Again!

Besides the breakthrough observations of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, another mind-mending

observation made was that the electron waves that travelled around the solenoid would indeed
pick up a ‘Phase difference’, just like in the case of the monopole.
Following the same strategy as above, one can actually show that “Electric Charge is
Quantized”. That was not mind-bending. We saw it happen earlier. What was ill-understood was
the connection between Monopoles and Solenoids. How come travelling around an Infinite
Solenoid yield the same result as travelling around Monopoles?

Topology to the rescue - connecting Magnetic Monopoles and

Solenoids?

A very interesting branch of mathematics exists by the name Topology which when applied to
the physical world can demonstrate how Coffee Cups with closed handles are the same as
Donuts! This seems pretty irritating even to think about. However, the confusion arises only
because of the too literal visualization of the situation. What one interprets is that a hard, well
shaped object like a Coffee Cup looks akin to a soft moldable object like a Donut.
The mathematical interpretation on the other hand is that if you want to study the mathematical
properties of each point of an object shaped like a Coffee Cup and a Donut, then they are not
different. It definitely does not deal with the mechanical, chemical or electrical properties of the
Cup and the Donut; but physicists are usually sloppy and its okay as long as one understands.

The missing link is also actually lying under

the hidden connection connecting Coffee
Cup to the Donut. In the case of the
Monopole, we already noted that the space
around the monopole behaves like a Solid
Sphere with a Tunnel.
But a solid sphere can actually be converted into the familiar
3D space (imagine it to be a cube if you want, but pretty
large, as large as you can think) - since changing a sphere
into a cube is topologically allowed. So a Solid Sphere with a
tunnel in the middle is topologically equivalent to a 3D space
(a cube) with the entire central portion missing.

If one ponders carefully, the space around an Infinite Solenoid

actually behaves similar to this. The magnetic field is only
inside the solenoid, and not outside.
So, if one considers the space that
lacks a magnetic field, then the
entire 3D space is a valid choice to look for except the central region
inside the solenoid. So the space is actually a 3D cube with the
central portion missing.

Isn’t it topologically equivalent to the Solid Sphere with a Tunnel in the middle - which is also the
space around a Monopole? Indeed it is, and so topology claims the mathematics related to the
space of Monopoles to be exactly the same as the mathematics of space around Infinite
Solenoid.

This is the sole reason why both yielded the same result for the Quantization of Charge !