Pair production of magnetic monopoles and stable high-electric-charge objects in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We describe pair-production models of spin-0 and spin-1/2 magnetic monopoles and high-electric-charge objects in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions, considering both the Drell-Yan and the photon-fusion processes. In particular, we extend the Drell-Yan production model of spin-1/2 high-electric-charge objects to include $Z^0$-boson exchange for proton-proton collisions. Furthermore, we explore spin-1/2 and, for the first time, spin-0 production in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. With matrix element calculations and equivalent photon fluxes implemented in MadGraph5_aMC@NLO, we present leading-order production cross sections of these mechanisms in $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV proton-proton collisions and $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}=5.5$ TeV ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions at the LHC. While the mass range accessible in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions is much lower than that in proton-proton collisions, we find that the theoretical production cross sections are significantly enhanced in the former for masses below 82 GeV.

15 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables, submitted to J. Phys. G

References in corpus (14)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• How bright is the proton? A precise determination of the photon parton distribution function
• Theoretical and Experimental Status of Magnetic Monopoles
• Magnetic Monopole Dynamics, Supersymmetry, and Duality
• Search for long-lived charged particles in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV
• Theory and Phenomenology of Exotic Isosinglet Quarks and Squarks
• Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL forward trapping detector in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC
• Magnetic monopoles revisited: Models and searches at colliders and in the Cosmos
• Looking for magnetic monopoles at LHC with diphoton events
• Magnetic monopole search with the full MoEDAL trapping detector in 13 TeV $pp$ collisions interpreted in photon-fusion and Drell-Yan production
• Schwinger pair production of magnetic monopoles: momentum distribution for heavy-ion collisions
• Magnetic Monopoles and Free Fractionally Charged States at Accelerators and in Cosmic Rays
• Production of magnetic monopoles and monopolium in peripheral collisions
• Instanton solution for Schwinger production of 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles