Searching for Magnetic Monopoles with MoEDAL

University Of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa AL

Investigators

Abstract

Magnetic monopoles are particles suggested to exist by Dirac to explain the quantization of the electric charge. The existence of magnetic monopoles is well motivated, but their mass and production mechanism are highly uncertain. Their detection would constitute a major transformational discovery in physics. Magnetic monopoles are also predicted in many variants of Grand Unification Theory (GUT) and in Supersymmetric (SUSY) models. This project will search for magnetic monopoles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN with the MoEDAL (Monopoles and Exotics Detector At the LHC). The search for the magnetic monopoles crosses many disciplinary boundaries in physics: from accelerator-based physics to astro-particle physics. A detection would have a profound impact on our understanding of Nature’s building blocks and would attract broad attention. This project will stimulate the imagination of undergraduate students and high school students in Tuscaloosa county by allowing them to participate in a modern international particle physics experiment. The educational objective of this proposal includes engaging a diverse group of undergraduate and high school students in citizen science analysis of the MoEDAL data. This project will also provide students with the opportunity to learn and apply the latest machine learning techniques. This project enables the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa group to contribute to the calibration of the MoEDAL experiment, analysis of the data, and convening the machine learning analysis group. This project will make a leading contribution to the analysis of the MoEDAL's proton-on-proton data from the second LHC run. In addition, the LHC lead-on-lead collision data will be analyzed by the group for the potential production of magnetic monopoles by the Schwinger mechanism, which will be the first time this process is investigated experimentally in this context. Finally, the group will contribute to the hardware extension of the MoEDAL detectors, which are currently being prepared for the next LHC run. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.