Abstract
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 (v>0.76c) and mildly relativistic (v>0.51c) monopoles, each using one year of data taken in 2008/09 and 2011/12 respectively. No monopole candidate was detected. For a velocity above 0.51c the monopole flux is constrained down to a level of 1.55x10^-18 cm-2 s-1 sr-1. This is an improvement of almost two orders of magnitude over previous limits.
Highlights
1 Introduction In Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) the existence of magnetic monopoles follows from general principles [1,2]
Such a theory is defined by a non-abelian gauge group that is spontaneously broken at a high energy to the Standard Model of particle physics [3]
In a given GUT model the monopole mass can be estimated by the unification scale GUT and the corresponding value of the running coupling constant αGUT as Mc2
Summary
In Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) the existence of magnetic monopoles follows from general principles [1,2]. Such a theory is defined by a non-abelian gauge group that is spontaneously broken at a high energy to the Standard Model of particle physics [3]. The condition that the broken symmetry contains the electromagnetic gauge group U(1)EM is sufficient for the existence of magnetic monopoles [4]. Under these conditions the monopole is predicted to carry a magnetic charge g governed by Dirac’s quantization condition [5].
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