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Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL prototype trapping detector in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC

Acharya, B; Alexandre, J; Bendtz, K; Benes, P; Bernabéu, J; Campbell, M; Cecchini, S; ... Yoon, JH; + view all (2016) Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL prototype trapping detector in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC. Journal of High Energy Physics , 2016 (8) , Article 67. 10.1007/JHEP08(2016)067. Green open access

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Abstract

The MoEDAL experiment is designed to search for magnetic monopoles and other highly-ionising particles produced in high-energy collisions at the LHC. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Interaction Point 8 on the LHC ring, relies on two dedicated direct detection techniques. The first technique is based on stacks of nucleartrack detectors with surface area ∼18 m2 , sensitive to particle ionisation exceeding a high threshold. These detectors are analysed offline by optical scanning microscopes. The second technique is based on the trapping of charged particles in an array of roughly 800 kg of aluminium samples. These samples are monitored offline for the presence of trapped magnetic charge at a remote superconducting magnetometer facility. We present here the results of a search for magnetic monopoles using a 160 kg prototype MoEDAL trapping detector exposed to 8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, for an integrated luminosity of 0.75 fb−1 . No magnetic charge exceeding 0.5gD (where gD is the Dirac magnetic charge) is measured in any of the exposed samples, allowing limits to be placed on monopole production in the mass range 100 GeV≤ m ≤ 3500 GeV. Model-independent cross-section limits are presented in fiducial regions of monopole energy and direction for 1gD ≤ |g| ≤ 6gD, and model-dependent cross-section limits are obtained for Drell-Yan pair production of spin-1/2 and spin-0 monopoles for 1gD ≤ |g| ≤ 4gD. Under the assumption of Drell-Yan cross sections, mass limits are derived for |g| = 2gD and |g| = 3gD for the first time at the LHC, surpassing the results from previous collider experiments.

Type: Article
Title: Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL prototype trapping detector in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/JHEP08(2016)067
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2016)067
Language: English
Additional information: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Keywords: Hadron-Hadron scattering (experiments); Particle and resonance production
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1552404
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