On the confinement of magnetic poles

In this note, the properties of Hamiltonians describing electron-monopole scattering will be discussed. In the first section we review some interesting topological features connected with this problem. In section 2 we present the eigenfunctions of the Schroedinger and the Dirac equation. Section 3 reviews the difficulties connected with the asymptotic scattering conditions. In section 4, a discussion of the electron vacuum states will provide a possible mechanism for the confinement of magnetic poles. Finally, section 5 yields a unified description of the case with several monopoles together with a treatment of the self-adjoint extensions of the Dirac operator. (orig.)