MoEDAL (Monopole and Exotics Detector at the LHC) is a

particle physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

experiment at the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...

(LHC).

Experiment

MoEDAL shares the cavern at Point 8 with

LHCb The LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment is a particle physics detector collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. LHCb specializes in the measurements of the parameters of CP violation in the interactions of b- and c-hadro ...

, and its prime goal is to directly search for the

magnetic monopole In particle physics, a magnetic monopole is a hypothetical particle that is an isolated magnet with only one magnetic pole (a north pole without a south pole or vice versa). A magnetic monopole would have a net north or south "magnetic charge". ...

or dyon and other highly ionizing stable massive particles and pseudo-stable massive particles. To detect these particles, MoEDAL uses both nuclear track detectors and aluminium trapping volumes. There are approximately 10 m² of nuclear track detectors placed around the interaction point. These suffer characteristic damage due to highly ionizing particles, such as magnetic monopoles or highly electrically charged particles. MoEDAL also has approximately 800 kg of aluminium bars placed around the interaction point, that can trap stable massive particles for later study. Passing these bars through a

SQUID A squid (: squid) is a mollusc with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight cephalopod limb, arms, and two tentacles in the orders Myopsida, Oegopsida, and Bathyteuthida (though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also ...

magnetometer yields a sensitive test for the presence of magnetic monopoles. MoEDAL is an international research collaboration whose spokesperson is James Pinfold, from the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

. It is the seventh experiment at the LHC, was approved and sanctioned by the

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

research board in May 2010, and started its first test deployment in January 2011. In 2012 MoEDAL accuracy surpassed accuracy of similar experiments. A new detector was installed in 2015, but as of 2017 it also did not find any magnetic monopoles, setting new limits on their production cross section. In 2022 they performed a search for magnetic monopoles produced via the

Schwinger effect The Schwinger effect is a predicted physical phenomenon whereby matter is created by a strong electric field. It is also referred to as the Sauter–Schwinger effect, Schwinger mechanism, or Schwinger pair production. It is a prediction of quantum ...

. The absence of a positive signal implies direct lower bounds on the mass of possible magnetic monopoles.

References

External links

http://moedal.web.cern.ch/

MoEDAL experiment record
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1 ...

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