TOPOLOGICAL ELECTRIC CHARGE

By treating magnetic charge as a gauge symmetry through the introducti on of a ''magnetic'' pseudo four-vector potential, we show that it is possible to construct a topological electric charge from a theory whic h originally contains gauge magnetic charge. This is an explicit reali zation of the Montonen-Olive conjecture that there should exist a dual theory to the usual 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole theory in which the ro les of the gauge and topological charges are reversed. The physical di stinction between 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles and the dual theory with electric charge is that the strong and weak coupling regimes are reve rsed. Physically this leads to the mass of the electrically charged so liton being on the order of (1/137) M(W) as opposed to the much larger mass (on the order of 137 M(W)) of the magnetically charged soliton. Thus even for M(W) in the TeV range such an electrically charged parti cle could be observed at some future accelerator.