Abstract. Starting from a weak gauge principle we give a new and critical revision of the argument leading to charge quantization on arbitrary spacetimes. The main differences of our approach with respect to previous works appear on spacetimes with non-trivial torsion elements on its second integral cohomology group. We show that in these spacetimes there can be topologically non-trivial configurations of charged fields which do not imply charge quantization. However, the existence of a non-exact electromagnetic field always implies the quantization of charges. Another consequence of the theory for spacetimes with torsion is the fact that it gives rise to two natural quantization units that could be identified with the electric quantization unit (realized inside the quarks) and with the electron charge. In this framework the colour charge can have a topological origin, with the number of colours being related to the order of the torsion subgroup. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the quantization of charge may be due to a weak non-exact component of the electromagnetic field extended over cosmological scales.

PACS numbers: 11.15.−q, 45.10.Na, 14.80.Hv, 14.65.−q

Print publication: Issue 30 (28 July 2006)
Received 23 January 2006, in final form 30 May 2006
Published 12 July 2006