Comments on GUT monopole energy loss and ionization

A few comments about the likely behavior of the electromagnetic energy loss and ionization rates of super-slowly moving magnetic monopoles are presented. The questions of energy loss rates and ionization rates for super-low monopoles passing through matter are considered, concentrating on aspects of these issues which affect practical detection techniques. It is worthwhile here to emphasize that there is a potentially great distinction between energy loss rates and ionization rates and that the magnitude of this distinction is really the great issue which must be settled in order to understand the significance of experimental results from present and proposed investigations of the slow monopole question. Energy loss here means the total dE/dX of the projectile due to interactions with the electrons of the slowing medium. To the extent that nuclear collisions can be neglected, this so-called electronic energy loss is the relevant quantity in questions about whether monopoles stop within the earth's crust, whether they are slowed by interstellar plasmas, or the signal in a truly calorimetric measurement (measuring temperature rises along the trajectory), etc. Most of our successful detection techniques depend upon the promotion of ground state electrons into states which lie above some energy gap in the material of the detector: electrons must be knocked completely free from the gas atoms in a proportional chamber gas, electrons must be promoted to a higher band in solid scintillator plastics. These processes are generically identified as ionization