On narrow showers of pairs of charged particles

Search for anomalous multiphoton production at 100–300 GeV

“…Ruderman and Zwanziger [5] have suggested that the annihilation of magnetic monopole pairs produced by high-energy photons provides a possible explanation for several anomalous jets of pure photons observed in emulsions exposed to cosmic rays [6][7][8][9]. These events, first observed by Schein et al [6], have several peculiar properties, notably their high degree of collimation, lack of charged particles, and the large number of photons produced.…”

“…2 of ref. [7] has a peculiar spatial distribution. It is reasonable to assume that the number of photons reaching our detector from an event of this type would produce ~20 pairs.…”

“…For the remaining events the angular distribution of secondary tracks which a Schein event should produce was considered. The typical photon energy is about 2 GeV [6][7][8][9]. A Schein event producing 15-20 pairs would be expected to produce at least 10-15 tracks within 31 mr in our detector (i.e., the higher energy electron from each pair has a 70% chance of remaining within an angle ~< 31 mr).…”