Topological theory of electromagnetism

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Abstract
A recently proposed topological theory of strong interactions is extended to electromagnetism. This extension is constructed so that, for reactions involving only leptons and photons, the topological expansion coincides with the usual perturbation expansion of QED. The lowest term in the topological expansion corresponds to pointlike elementary hadrons (as well as leptons); hadronic structure appears in nonleading topological terms. A natural explanation emerges for the quantization of electric charge and for the observed charges of leptons and hadrons. Fractional charges nowhere appear even though there is a notion of quark-photon coupling. No topological explanation has yet emerged for the zero photon mass or for the value of the fine-structure constant.