New article: The new research discovers hidden aspects of electrodynamics read more at here http://www.spinonews.com/index.php/science/item/3288-the-new-research-discovers-hidden-aspects-of-electrodynamics

A team of researchers from the Universidad de Valencia, Spain, advances knowledge of Maxwell’s theory.

The theory remains same under the interchange of the electric and magnetic fields, when charges and currents are not present. This similarity called the electric-magnetic duality.

While, electric charges exist magnetic charges have never been observed in nature. If magnetic charges do not exist, the symmetry also cannot exist. This mystery has motivated physicists to search for magnetic charges, or magnetic monopoles. Now, the researchers have discovered the solution.

Gravity and quantum effects disrupts the electric magnetic duality or symmetry of the electromagnetic fields.  

A research team led by LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy Assistant Professor Ivan Agullo and his team discovered this by using previous studies that illustrate this phenomenon among other types of particles in the universe, called fermions, and applied it to photons in electromagnetic fields.

Agullo said, we have been able to write the theory of the electromagnetic field in a way that very much resembles the theory of fermions, and prove this absence of symmetry by using powerful techniques that were developed for fermions. 

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The new discovery could impact on the study of the birth of the universe. According to radiation data collected from the Big Bang, called Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the radiation contains valuable information about the history of the universe.

To analyzing the data scientists have assumed that the polarization of photons in the CMB is not affected by the gravitational field in the universe, which is true only if electromagnetic symmetry exists.

However, the new research shows that the regularity does not exist at the fundamental level, the polarization of the CMB can change throughout cosmic evolution.

More information: [Physical Review Letters]