Magnetic monopoles as agents of chiral symmetry breaking in U(1) lattice gauge theory

We present results suggesting that magnetic monopoles can account for chiral symmetry breaking in abelian gauge theory. Full U(1) configurations from a lattice simulation are factorized into magnetic monopole and photon contributions. The expectation <ψ¯ψ> is computed using the monopole configurations and compared to results for the full U(1) configurations. It is shown that excellent agreement between the two values of <ψ¯ψ> is obtained if the effect of photons, which ``dress'' the composite operator ψ¯ψ, is included. This can be estimated independently by measurements of the physical fermion mass in the photon background.