Dortmund 2021 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 62: Search for New Particles V

T 62.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 16:15–16:30, Tl

Search for Sub-Relativistic Magnetic Monopoles in IceCube — •Christian Dappen, Jakob Böttcher, Sukeerthi Dharani, and Christopher Wiebusch for the IceCube collaboration — RWTH Aachen University - Physics Institute III B, Aachen, Germany

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects high energy atmospheric neutrinos through their interaction in the Antarctic ice while also searching for more exotic particles such as magnetic monopoles. These hypothetical particles are predicted by Grand Unified Theories to originate from the very early universe. For masses on the GUT-scale (10¹⁴ - 10¹⁷ GeV) those monopoles would move at subrelativistic speeds (β < 10⁻²) through IceCube. A subrelativistic monopole in matter may catalyze nucleon decays via the Rubakov-Callan effect. This results in Cherenkov light from small particle showers along the trajectory of the monopole separated by centimeters to meters. This pattern is recognised by a dedicated Slow Particle Trigger in the detector. Simulated monopole signal and a data-driven background simulation are used to train a multivariate machine learning algorithm separating signal from background events. A first level Boosted Decision Tree is used to reject most of the background and further levels can perform a finer separation on the remaining events to achieve a final selection.