G. E. Pavalas | TrappedIons.org

MoEDAL search in the CMS beam pipe for magnetic monopoles produced via the Schwinger effect

B. Acharya [1], J. Alexandre [1,2], S. C. Behera, P. Benes [3], B. Bergmann [3], S. Bertolucci [4], A. Bevan [5], R. Brancaccio [6], H. Branzas [7], P. Burian [3], M. Campbell [8], S. Cecchini [4], Y. M. Cho [9], M. de Montigny [10], A. De Roeck [8], J. R. Ellis [1,11], M. Fairbairn [1], D. Felea [7], M. Frank [12], O. Gould [13], J. Hays [5,14], A. M. Hirt, D. L. -J. Ho [15], P. Q. Hung [16], J. Janecek [3], M. Kalliokoski [17,8], D. H. Lacarrere, C. Leroy [18], G. Levi [6], A. Margiotta [6], R. Maselek [19], A. Maulik [4,10], N. Mauri [6], N. E. Mavromatos [1], L. Millward [5], V. A. Mitsou [20], E. Musumeci [20], I. Ostrovskiy [2], P. -P. Ouimet [21], J. Papavassiliou [20], L. Patrizii [4,7], G. E. Pavalas, J. L. Pinfold [10], L. A. Popa [7], V. Popa [7], M. Pozzato [4], S. Pospisil [3], A. Rajantie [15], R. Ruiz de Austri [20], Z. Sahnoun [6], M. Sakellariadou [1], K. Sakurai [19], S. Sarkar [1], G. Semenoff [22], A. Shaa [10], G. Sirri [4], K. Sliwa [23], R. Soluk [10], M. Spurio [6], M. Staelens [20], M. Suk [3], M. Tenti [4], V. Togo [4,10], J. A. Tuszynski, A. Upreti [2], V. Vento [20], O. Vives [20]

Abstract

We report on a search for magnetic monopoles (MMs) produced in ultraperipheral Pb--Pb collisions during Run-1 of the LHC. The beam pipe surrounding the interaction region of the CMS experiment was exposed to 184.07 \textmu b$^{-1}$ of Pb--Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV center-of-mass energy per collision in December 2011, before being removed in 2013. It was scanned by the MoEDAL experiment using a SQUID magnetometer to search for trapped MMs. No MM signal was observed. The two distinctive features of this search are the use of a trapping volume very close to the collision point and ultra-high magnetic fields generated during the heavy-ion run that could produce MMs via the Schwinger effect. These two advantages allowed setting the first reliable, world-leading mass limits on MMs with high magnetic charge. In particular, the established limits are the strongest available in the range between 2 and 45 Dirac units, excluding MMs with masses of up to 80 GeV at 95\% confidence level.