Magnetic monopoles and nonassociative deformations of quantum theory

Abstract: We examine certain nonassociative deformations of quantum mechanics and gravity in three dimensions related to the dynamics of electrons in uniform distributions of magnetic charge. We describe a quantitative framework for nonassociative quantum mechanics in this setting, which exhibits new effects compared to ordinary quantum mechanics with sourceless magnetic fields, and the extent to which these theoretical consequences may be experimentally testable. We relate this theory to noncommutative Jordanian quantum mechanics, and show that its underlying algebra can be obtained as a contraction of the alternative algebra of octonions. The uncontracted octonion algebra conjecturally describes a nonassociative deformation of three-dimensional quantum gravity induced by magnetic monopoles, which we propose is realised by a non-geometric Kaluza-Klein monopole background in M-theory.