Monopolium: the key to monopoles

Abstract

Dirac showed that the existence of one magnetic pole in the universe could offer an explanation for the discrete nature of the electric charge. Magnetic poles appear naturally in most Grand Unified Theories. Their discovery would be of greatest importance for particle physics and cosmology. The intense experimental search carried thus far has not met with success. Moreover, if the monopoles are very massive their production is outside the range of present day facilities. A way out of this impasse would be if the monopoles bind to form monopolium, a monopole-antimonopole bound state, which is so strongly bound, that it has a relatively small mass. Under these circumstances it could be produced with present day facilities and the existence of monopoles could be indirectly proven. We study the feasibility of detecting monopolium in present and future accelerators. Pacs: 14.80.Hv, 95.30.Cq,

Production of magnetic monopoles and monopolium in peripheral collisions

“…See [21] for a recent review of experimental searches of this particles in colliders and cosmic rays. Meanwhile, the experimental difficulties for the experimental observation of isolated magnetic monopoles suggest the existence of a bound state, the monopolium [22,23].…”

Searches for magnetic monopoles and beyond with MoEDAL at the LHC

“…A possible explanation for the lack of experimental confirmation of monopoles is Dirac's proposal [7,8,19] that monopoles are not seen freely because they form a bound state called monopolium [20,21,24] being confined by strong magnetic forces. Monopolium is a neutral state, hence it is difficult to detect directly at a collider detector, although its decay into two photons would give a rather clear signal for the ATLAS and CMS detectors [25,26], which however would not be visible in the MoEDAL detector.…”

“…Nevertheless according to a novel proposal [27], the LHC radiation detector systems can be used to turn the LHC itself into a new physics search machine by detecting final-state protons pp → pX p (X are centrally produced particles), exiting the LHC beam vacuum chamber at locations determined by their fractional momentum losses. At high central masses M X > 150 GeV, the photon-photon process dominates making this technique appealing for detecting monopolia, which are expected to be produced in γγ fusion [24,25].…”

Searches for New Physics with the MoEDAL detector at the LHC

“…A possible explanation for the lack of experimental confirmation of monopoles is Dirac's proposal [11,12,23] that monopoles are not seen freely because they form a bound state called monopolium [24,25,28] being confined by strong magnetic forces. Monopolium is a neutral state, hence it is difficult to detect directly at a collider detector, although its decay into two photons would give a rather clear signal for the ATLAS and CMS detectors [29,30], which however would not be visible in the MoEDAL detector.…”