In physics, a Dirac string is a fictitious one-dimensional curve in space, conceived of by the physicist Paul Dirac, stretching between two Dirac magnetic monopoles with opposite magnetic charges, or from one magnetic monopole out to infinity. The gauge potential cannot be defined on the Dirac string, but it is defined everywhere else. The Dirac string acts as the solenoid in the Aharonov-Bohm effect, and the requirement that the position of the Dirac string should not be observable implies the Dirac quantization rule: the product of a magnetic charge and an electric charge must always be an integer multiple of . The magnetic flux running along the interior of the string maintains the validity of Maxwell's equations. If Maxwell equations are modified to allow magnetic charges at the fundamental level then the magnetic monopoles are Dirac monopoles no longer and do not require attached Dirac strings.
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“The string quartet plays for itself,
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—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)