Duality in Off-Shell Electromagnetism

In this paper, we examine the Dirac monopole in the framework of Off-Shell Electromagnetism, the five-dimensional U(1) gauge theory associated with Stueckelberg–Schrodinger relativistic quantum theory. After reviewing the Dirac model in four dimensions, we show that the structure of the five-dimensional theory prevents a natural generaliza tion of the Dirac monopole, since the theory is not symmetric under duality transforma tions. It is shown that the duality symmetry can be restored by generalizing the electromagnetic field strength to an element of a Clifford algebra. Nevertheless, the generalized framework does not permit us to recover the phenomenological (or conventional) absence of magnetic monopoles.