Search for Magnetic Monopoles
For the past three years we have been cooperating with researchers under the external pageMoEDAL (Monopole and Exotic Detector at the LHC – Large Hadron Collider) project at external pageCERN in their search for magnetic monopoles. One type of detector consists of aluminum rods that were exposed 13TeV proton-proton collisions near the external pageLHCb interaction point. The presence of a monopole would cause a trapped flux, i.e., persistent current, in the SQUID sensors. Over 800 kg of samples have been passed through our long-core cryogenic magnetometer to search for trapped flux in SQUIDS. No magnetic monopoles have been discovered until present, but the serach continues.
Collaboration: A.M. Hirt, P. Mermod (Univ. Geneva/CERN), members of the MoEDAL collaboration
- MoEDAL Collaboration, Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL forward trapping detector in 2.11fb−1of 13TeV proton–proton collisions at the LHC, Physics Letters B, 782, 510-516, doi: 0.1016/j.physletb.2018.05.069, 2018.
- MoEDAL Collaboration, Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL forward trapping detector in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC. Physical Review Letters, 118, 061801,doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.061801, 2017.
- MoE,DAL Collaboration, Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL prototype trapping detector in 8TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, Journal of High Energy Physics, 067, doi: 10.1007/JHEP08(2016)067, 2016.