A new frontier for Magnetic Monopoles searches - LHC Pb-Pb collisions via Schwinger Mechanism

The Schwinger mechanism predicts the production of an electron-positron pair through the decay of an extremely strong electric field. Magnetic Monopoles (MMs) - if they exist - would be produced in sufficiently strong magnetic fields via the electromagnetic dual of this process. The 2018 lead ion collisions at the LHC produced the strongest magnetic fields in the known Universe. The MoEDAL detectors – Magnetic Monopole trappers (MMTs) and Nuclear Track Detectors (NTDs) were exposed to 0.235 nb^-1 of Pb-Pb collisions with 5.02 TeV center-of-mass energy per collision. The analysis excluded the presence of MMs with Dirac charges 1g_D ≤ g ≤ 3g_D and masses up to 75 GeV/c² at 95% confidence level. Uniquely, the MM production rate can be calculated by semi-classical methods without the use of perturbative calculation. This search, thus, provides the first reliable lower mass bound for finite-size magnetic monopoles from a collider search while significantly extending previous bounds. Additionally, the CMS Run-1 Beryllium beam pipe is currently being analyzed for Schwinger-produced Monopoles. This talk would describe the results thus far and the ongoing searches to expand the sensitivity of MoEDAL detectors to higher magnetic charges.