Conservation laws in the monopole-induced baryon-number-violating processes

Abstract

Monopole-induced baryon-number-violating processes are analyzed using the conservation laws for the ordinary and the chiral charge densities. It is shown that in the strictly massless limit reactions of the form u₁+M→u₂^c+d₃^c+e⁺+M are ruled out by these conservation laws. This, however, does not mean that the baryon-number-violating processes are suppressed, since reactions of the type u₁+u₂+M→d₃^c+e⁺+M may take place even if the incoming u₁ and u₂ do not have any appreciable overlap in their wave functions. The role of the Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly in the baryon-number-violating processes is investigated. It is shown that the baryon-number violation takes place because of nontrivial boundary conditions at the monopole core, and is independent of the existence of the Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly. We may have chirality-conserving as well as chirality-nonconserving baryon-number-violating processes. It is also shown that the inclusion of extra Coulomb energies, e.g., weak or electromagnetic Coulomb energies, cannot qualitatively change the baryon-number-violating effects.