Eur. Phys. J. C (2016) 76: 133
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-3953-8

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Searches for relativistic magnetic monopoles in IceCube

¹ III. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, 52056, Aachen, Germany
² New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
³ Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5005, Australia
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage, AK, 99508, USA
⁵ CTSPS, Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA, 30314, USA
⁶ School of Physics and Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA
⁷ Department of Physics, Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70813, USA
⁸ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
⁹ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
¹⁰ Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489, Berlin, Germany
¹¹ Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
¹² Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 12, 53115, Bonn, Germany
¹³ Université Libre de Bruxelles, Science Faculty CP230, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹⁴ Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Dienst ELEM, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
¹⁵ Department of Physics, Chiba University, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan
¹⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
¹⁷ Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
¹⁸ Department of Physics and Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
¹⁹ Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
²⁰ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
²¹ Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, 44221, Dortmund, Germany
²² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA
²³ Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1,
²⁴ Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
²⁵ Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire, Université de Genève, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland
²⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Gent, 9000, Gent, Belgium
²⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA
²⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA
²⁹ Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
³⁰ Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
³¹ Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudinger Weg 7, 55099, Mainz, Germany
³² Université de Mons, 7000, Mons, Belgium
³³ Technische Universität München, 85748, Garching, Germany
³⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA
³⁵ Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA
³⁶ Department of Physics, University of Oxford, 1 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3NP, UK
³⁷ Department of Physics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA
³⁸ Physics Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, 57701, USA
³⁹ Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, 54022, USA
⁴⁰ Department of Physics, Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
⁴¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-3800, USA
⁴² Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea
⁴³ Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1A7,
⁴⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
⁴⁵ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
⁴⁶ Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
⁴⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 75120, Uppsala, Sweden
⁴⁸ Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany
⁴⁹ DESY, 15735, Zeuthen, Germany

^* e-mail: anna.pollmann@uni-wuppertal.de
^** e-mail: jposselt@icecube.wisc.edu

Received: 4 November 2015
Accepted: 16 February 2016
Published online: 10 March 2016

Abstract

Various extensions of the Standard Model motivate the existence of stable magnetic monopoles that could have been created during an early high-energy epoch of the Universe. These primordial magnetic monopoles would be gradually accelerated by cosmic magnetic fields and could reach high velocities that make them visible in Cherenkov detectors such as IceCube. Equivalently to electrically charged particles, magnetic monopoles produce direct and indirect Cherenkov light while traversing through matter at relativistic velocities. This paper describes searches for relativistic () and mildly relativistic () monopoles, each using one year of data taken in 2008/2009 and 2011/2012, respectively. No monopole candidate was detected. For a velocity above the monopole flux is constrained down to a level of . This is an improvement of almost two orders of magnitude over previous limits.