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In grand unified models, the abundance of superheavy magnetic monopoles in the universe can be suppressed if (1) the phase transition which creates the monopoles occurs after much supercooling; and (2) immediately after the phase transition, the effective monopole mass is large compared with the temperature. These requirements impose constraints on the history of the early universe. The Georgi-Glashow SU(5) group probably breaks to SU(4) {} U(1) before it reaches SU(3) {} SU(2) {} U(1).
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Guth et al. (1980) studied this question.
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