Pith. sign in

REVIEW 5 cited by

First experimental search for production of magnetic monopoles via the Schwinger mechanism

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

Re-run · record.json Download PDF Read on arXiv ↗

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2106.11933 v2 pith:W5OP7X2I submitted 2021-06-22 hep-ex hep-ph

B. Acharya , J. Alexandre , P. Benes , B. Bergmann , S. Bertolucci , A. Bevan , H. Branzas , P.Burian
show 59 more authors
M. Campbell Y. M. Cho M. de Montigny A. De Roeck J.R. Ellis M. El Sawy M. Fairbairn D. Felea M. Frank O. Gould J. Hays A. M. Hirt D.L.J. Ho P.Q. Hung J. Janecek M. Kalliokoski A. Korzenev D. H. Lacarrère C. Leroy G. Levi A. Lionti A. Maulik A. Margiotta N. Mauri N. E. Mavromatos P. Mermod L. Millward V. A. Mitsou I. Ostrovskiy P.-P. Ouimet J. Papavassiliou B. Parker L. Patrizii G. E. Păvălaş J. L. Pinfold L. A. Popa V. Popa M. Pozzato S. Pospisil A. Rajantie R. Ruiz de Austri Z. Sahnoun M. Sakellariadou A. Santra S. Sarkar G. Semenoff A. Shaa G. Sirri K. Sliwa R. Soluk M. Spurio M. Staelens M. Suk M. Tenti V. Togo J. A. Tuszyński A. Upreti V. Vento O. Vives
This is my paper · ORCID
classification hep-exhep-ph
keywords magneticmechanismschwingerfirstproductionsearchstrongwere
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
abstract

Schwinger showed that electrically-charged particles can be produced in a strong electric field by quantum tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier. By electromagnetic duality, if magnetic monopoles (MMs) exist, they would be produced by the same mechanism in a sufficiently strong magnetic field. Unique advantages of the Schwinger mechanism are that its rate can be calculated using semiclassical techniques without relying on perturbation theory, and the finite MM size and strong MM-photon coupling are expected to enhance their production. Pb-Pb heavy-ion collisions at the LHC produce the strongest known magnetic fields in the current Universe, and this article presents the first search for MM production by the Schwinger mechanism. It was conducted by the MoEDAL experiment during the 5.02 TeV/nucleon heavy-ion run at the LHC in November 2018, during which the MoEDAL trapping detectors (MMTs) were exposed to 0.235 nb$^{-1}$ of Pb-Pb collisions. The MMTs were scanned for the presence of magnetic charge using a SQUID magnetometer. MMs with Dirac charges 1$g_D$ $\leq$ $g$ $\leq$ 3$g_D$ and masses up to 75 GeV/c$^2$ were excluded by the analysis. This provides the first lower mass limit for finite-size MMs from a collider search and significantly extends previous mass bounds.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Constraints on magnetic monopoles from X-ray observations of neutron stars

    astro-ph.HE 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    X-ray non-detections of old millisecond pulsars constrain the Galactic magnetic-monopole flux to below about 6e-19 cm^-2 s^-1 sr^-1 for QCD-scale catalysis, the strongest bound in the 1e11-1e13 GeV mass range.

  2. Self-Consistent Parker Bound on Magnetic Monopoles

    hep-ph 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    A self-consistent Parker bound on magnetic monopoles is derived using the galactic mean-field dynamo eigenmode and turbulent field seeding and acceleration, producing modified flux limits at low and intermediate masse...

  3. Cosmology-Independent Constraints on Irreducible Magnetic Monopole Background

    hep-ph 2024-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Cosmic-ray collisions with interstellar gas create monopoles that would drain galactic magnetic fields, yielding new cosmology-independent Parker-like bounds on light monopoles.

  4. Self-Gravitating Magnetic Monopoles and Dyons in String-Inspired Models: Structure and Stability

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.5 of 10

    Global monopoles plus dilaton/axion/Born-Infeld yield regular self-gravitating magnetic monopoles and dyons with positive ADM mass, finite energy and linear exterior EM stability.

  5. Ultra-peripheral Collisions

    hep-ex 2026-07 conditional novelty 1.0 of 10

    Ultra-peripheral collisions of heavy ions are reviewed as the energy frontier for photon physics; the paper consolidates a decade of LHC/RHIC results and proposes no new measurement.

Pith tools