Lagrangian formulation for electric charge in a magnetic monopole distribution

Abstract

We give a Lagrangian description of an electric charge in a field sourced by a continuous magnetic monopole distribution. The description is made possible thanks to a doubling of the configuration space. The Legendre transform of the nonrelativistic Lagrangian agrees with the Hamiltonian description given recently by Kupriyanov and Szabo. The covariant relativistic version of the Lagrangian is shown to introduce a new gauge symmetry, in addition to standard reparametrizations. The generalization of the system to open strings coupled to a magnetic monopole distribution is also given, as well as the generalization to particles in a non-Abelian gauge field which does not satisfy Bianchi identities in some region of the space-time.