A prototype for the SHiP timing detector Betancourt, C.; Korzenev, A.; Mermod, P. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
11/2020, Letnik:
979
Journal Article
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The proposed SHiP experiment located at the CERN SPS will search for feebly interacting particles with masses below 10 GeV/c2. A veto timing detector will reject combinatorial di-muon backgrounds by ...requiring event to be coincident in time within 100 ps. The baseline option for the timing detector consist of scintillating bars read out by arrays of silicon photomultipliers. The detector comprises 546 bars of EJ200 scintillating material with dimensions 168 cm × 6 cm × 1 cm broken into three columns and covering an active area of 5 m × 10 m. The end of each bar is read out by an array of eight silicon photomultipliers attached to custom PCBs and subsequently read out by a DAQ system based on a SAMPIC chip. We present test beam results on a single column 22 bar prototype for the SHiP timing detector. Measurements were taken at the T10 beam line of the CERN PS. A timing resolution across the detector is found to be about 90 ps. The particle identification capability using a time of flight method is also demonstrated.
MoEDAL is designed to identify new physics in the form of stable or pseudostable highly ionizing particles produced in high-energy Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collisions. Here we update our previous ...search for magnetic monopoles in Run 2 using the full trapping detector with almost four times more material and almost twice more integrated luminosity. For the first time at the LHC, the data were interpreted in terms of photon-fusion monopole direct production in addition to the Drell-Yan-like mechanism. The MoEDAL trapping detector, consisting of 794 kg of aluminum samples installed in the forward and lateral regions, was exposed to 4.0 fb^{-1} of 13 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHCb interaction point and analyzed by searching for induced persistent currents after passage through a superconducting magnetometer. Magnetic charges equal to or above the Dirac charge are excluded in all samples. Monopole spins 0, ½, and 1 are considered and both velocity-independent and-dependent couplings are assumed. This search provides the best current laboratory constraints for monopoles with magnetic charges ranging from two to five times the Dirac charge.
Electrically charged particles can be created by the decay of strong enough electric fields, a phenomenon known as the Schwinger mechanism
. By electromagnetic duality, a sufficiently strong magnetic ...field would similarly produce magnetic monopoles, if they exist
. Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical fundamental particles that are predicted by several theories beyond the standard model
but have never been experimentally detected. Searching for the existence of magnetic monopoles via the Schwinger mechanism has not yet been attempted, but it is advantageous, owing to the possibility of calculating its rate through semi-classical techniques without perturbation theory, as well as that the production of the magnetic monopoles should be enhanced by their finite size
and strong coupling to photons
. Here we present a search for magnetic monopole production by the Schwinger mechanism in Pb-Pb heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, producing the strongest known magnetic fields in the current Universe
. It was conducted by the MoEDAL experiment, whose trapping detectors were exposed to 0.235 per nanobarn, or approximately 1.8 × 10
, of Pb-Pb collisions with 5.02-teraelectronvolt center-of-mass energy per collision in November 2018. A superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer scanned the trapping detectors of MoEDAL for the presence of magnetic charge, which would induce a persistent current in the SQUID. Magnetic monopoles with integer Dirac charges of 1, 2 and 3 and masses up to 75 gigaelectronvolts per speed of light squared were excluded by the analysis at the 95% confidence level. This provides a lower mass limit for finite-size magnetic monopoles from a collider search and greatly extends previous mass bounds.
MoEDAL is designed to identify new physics in the form of long-lived highly ionizing particles produced in high-energy LHC collisions. Its arrays of plastic nuclear-track detectors and aluminium ...trapping volumes provide two independent passive detection techniques. We present here the results of a first search for magnetic monopole production in 13 TeV proton-proton collisions using the trapping technique, extending a previous publication with 8 TeV data during LHC Run 1. A total of 222 kg of MoEDAL trapping detector samples was exposed in the forward region and analyzed by searching for induced persistent currents after passage through a superconducting magnetometer. Magnetic charges exceeding half the Dirac charge are excluded in all samples and limits are placed for the first time on the production of magnetic monopoles in 13 TeV pp collisions. The search probes mass ranges previously inaccessible to collider experiments for up to five times the Dirac charge.
The MoEDAL trapping detector consists of approximately 800 kg of aluminum volumes. It was exposed during run 2 of the LHC program to 6.46 fb^{-1} of 13 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHCb ...interaction point. Evidence for dyons (particles with electric and magnetic charge) captured in the trapping detector was sought by passing the aluminum volumes comprising the detector through a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer. The presence of a trapped dyon would be signaled by a persistent current induced in the SQUID magnetometer. On the basis of a Drell-Yan production model, we exclude dyons with a magnetic charge ranging up to five Dirac charges (5g_{D}) and an electric charge up to 200 times the fundamental electric charge for mass limits in the range 870-3120 GeV and also monopoles with magnetic charge up to and including 5g_{D} with mass limits in the range 870-2040 GeV.
The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are able to discover or set limits on the production of exotic particles with TeV-scale masses possessing values of electric and/or magnetic charge ...such that they behave as highly ionising particles (HIPs). In this paper the sensitivity of the LHC experiments to HIP production is discussed in detail. It is shown that a number of different detection methods are required to investigate as fully as possible the charge-mass range. These include direct detection as the HIPs pass through either passive or active detectors and, in the case of magnetically charged objects, the so-called induction method with which magnetic monopoles which stop in accelerator and detector material could be observed. The benefit of using complementary approaches to HIP detection is discussed.
A
bstract
The MoEDAL experiment is designed to search for magnetic monopoles and other highly-ionising particles produced in high-energy collisions at the LHC. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, ...deployed at Interaction Point 8 on the LHC ring, relies on two dedicated direct detection techniques. The first technique is based on stacks of nucleartrack detectors with surface area ~18m
2
, sensitive to particle ionisation exceeding a high threshold. These detectors are analysed offline by optical scanning microscopes. The second technique is based on the trapping of charged particles in an array of roughly 800 kg of aluminium samples. These samples are monitored offline for the presence of trapped magnetic charge at a remote superconducting magnetometer facility. We present here the results of a search for magnetic monopoles using a 160 kg prototype MoEDAL trapping detector exposed to 8TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, for an integrated luminosity of 0.75 fb
–1
. No magnetic charge exceeding 0:5
g
D
(where
g
D
is the Dirac magnetic charge) is measured in any of the exposed samples, allowing limits to be placed on monopole production in the mass range 100 GeV≤ m ≤ 3500 GeV. Model-independent cross-section limits are presented in fiducial regions of monopole energy and direction for 1
g
D
≤ |
g
| ≤ 6
g
D
, and model-dependent cross-section limits are obtained for Drell-Yan pair production of spin-1/2 and spin-0 monopoles for 1
g
D
≤ |
g
| ≤ 4
g
D
. Under the assumption of Drell-Yan cross sections, mass limits are derived for |
g
| = 2
g
D
and |
g
| = 3
g
D
for the first time at the LHC, surpassing the results from previous collider experiments.
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