Ionization-based search for magnetic monopoles using the NOvA Far Detector

Abstract

We report a search for highly-ionizing magnetic monopoles in the cosmic-ray flux using a 2,713-day dataset collected during 2015--2025 with the NOvA Far Detector, a 14-kiloton segmented detector located on the Earth's surface in Minnesota, United States. The search is sensitive to monopoles across a wide range of speeds, $7\times 10^{-4}<\beta <0.995$, and is sensitive to masses as low as $2\times 10^5\mathrm{GeV}$ for the fastest monopoles. No signal was observed. With the detector's large surface area and minimal overburden, we achieve the strongest flux limits reported to date in several regions of speed and mass. For heavy monopoles with masses above $10^{13}$ GeV that are able to reach the detector from above or -- crossing the Earth -- from below, we find a flux limit ${\varphi }_{90\%}<2\times 10^{-16}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\mathrm{s}{\mathrm{r}}^{-1}$ (90\% C.L.) for monopoles with $0.005<\beta <0.8$. Across the same range of speeds, we report a limit ${\varphi }_{90\%}<8\times 10^{-16}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\mathrm{s}{\mathrm{r}}^{-1}$ for light monopoles with masses above $10^8$ GeV that can reach the detector from above.

12 pages, 9 figures, Published in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (17)

• Monopoles, Duality, and String Theory
• Search for magnetic monopoles with the MoEDAL prototype trapping detector in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC
• Magnetic monopole search with the full MoEDAL trapping detector in 13 TeV $pp$ collisions interpreted in photon-fusion and Drell-Yan production
• Magnetic Monopole Search at high altitude with the SLIM experiment
• Magnetic monopole mass bounds from heavy ion collisions and neutron stars
• Searches for Relativistic Magnetic Monopoles in IceCube
• Liquid scintillator production for the NOvA experiment
• Search for GUT Monopoles at Super-Kamiokande
• Topologically stable, finite-energy electroweak-scale monopoles
• Search for Relativistic Magnetic Monopoles with Eight Years of IceCube Data
• Mass of the Electroweak Monopole
• Search for magnetic monopoles and stable particles with high electric charges in $\sqrt{s}=$13 TeV $pp$ collisions with the ATLAS detector
• MoEDAL search in the CMS beam pipe for magnetic monopoles produced via the Schwinger effect
• Search for Magnetic Monopoles with ten years of the ANTARES neutrino telescope
• Search for Slow Magnetic Monopoles with the NOvA Detector on the Surface
• Search for magnetic monopole pair production in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{\text{NN}}}}=5.36$ TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Monopoles From an Atmospheric Fixed Target Experiment