The Magnetic Monopole Seventy-Five Years Later

Abstract

Non-Abelian monopoles are present in the fully quantum mechanical low-energy effective action of many solvable supersymmetric theories. They behave perfectly as pointlike particles carrying non-Abelian dual magnetic charges. They play a crucial role in confinement and in dynamical symmetry breaking in these theories. There is a natural identification of these excitations within the semiclassical approach, which involves the flavor symmetry in an essential manner. We review, in an introductory fashion, the recent development which has led to a better understanding of the nature of non-Abelian monopoles and of their role in confinement and dynamical symmetry breaking in strongly interacting theories.