Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Search For Slow Magnetic Monopoles With The Nova Detector On The Surface, M. A. Acero, P. Adamson, L. Aliaga, T. Alion, V. Allakhverdian, N. Anfimov, A. Antoshkin, E. Arrieta-Diaz, L. Asquith, A. Aurisano, A. Back, C. Backhouse, M. Biard, N. Balashov, P. Baldi, B. A. Bambah, S. Bashar, K. Bays, S. Bending, R. Bernstein, Roberto Petti, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

We report a search for a magnetic monopole component of the cosmic-ray flux in a 95-day exposure of the NOvA experiment’s Far Detector, a 14 kt segmented liquid scintillator detector designed primarily to observe GeV-scale electron neutrinos. No events consistent with monopoles were observed, setting an upper limit on the flux of 2 × 10⁻¹⁴ cm⁻² s⁻¹ sr⁻¹ at 90% C.L. for monopole speed 6 × 10⁻⁴ < β < 5 × 10⁻³ and mass greater than 5 × 10⁸ GeV. Because of NOvA’s small overburden of 3 meters-water equivalent, this constraint covers a previously unexplored low-mass region.