Searches for relativistic magnetic monopoles in IceCube

• Published in: The European Physical Journal C
• Main Authors: Aartsen, M. G., Abraham, K., Ackermann, M., Adams, J., Aguilar, J. A., Ahlers, M., Ahrens, M., Altmann, D., Anderson, T., Ansseau, I., Archinger, M., Arguelles, C., Arlen, T. C., Auffenberg, J., Bai, X., Barwick, S. W., Baum, V., Bay, R., Beatty, J. J., Tjus, J. Becker, Becker, K. -H, Beiser, E., Benabderrahmane, M. L., Berghaus, P., Berley, D., Bernardini, E., Bernhard, A., Besson, D. Z., Binder, G., Bindig, D., Bissok, M., Blaufuss, E., Blumenthal, J., Boersma, David J., Bohm, C., Boerner, M., Bos, F., Bose, D., Boeser, S., Botner, Olga, Braun, J., Brayeur, L., Bretz, H. -P, Buzinsky, N., Casey, J., Casier, M., Cheung, E., Chirkin, D., Christov, A., Clark, K.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Högenergifysik 2016
• Subjects: Subatomic Physics; Subatomär fysik; Canada; National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs; Swedish Polar Research Secretariat
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-288599; https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-3953-8

Various extensions of the Standard Model motivate the existence of stable magnetic monopoles that could have been created during an early high-energy epoch of the Universe. These primordial magnetic monopoles would be gradually accelerated by cosmic magnetic fields and could reach high velocities that make them visible in Cherenkov detectors such as IceCube. Equivalently to electrically charged particles, magnetic monopoles produce direct and indirect Cherenkov light while traversing through matter at relativistic velocities. This paper describes searches for relativistic (nu >= 0.76 c) and mildly relativistic (nu >= 0.51 c) monopoles, each using one year of data taken in 2008/2009 and 2011/2012, respectively. No monopole candidate was detected. For a velocity above 0.51 c the monopole flux is constrained down to a level of 1.55 x 10(-18) cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1). This is an improvement of almost two orders of magnitude over previous limits. Funding: We acknowledge the support from the following agencies: U.S. National Science Foundation-Office of Polar Programs, U.S. National Science Foundation-Physics Division, University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Grid Laboratory Of Wisconsin (GLOW) grid infrastructure at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the Open Science Grid (OSG) grid infrastructure; U.S. Department of Energy, and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) grid computing resources; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, West-Grid and Compute/Calcul Canada; Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Research Department of Plasmas with Complex Interactions (Bochum), Germany; Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FWO), FWO Odysseus programme, ...