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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 93: Search for New Particles 6
T 93.9: Talk
Thursday, March 24, 2022, 18:15–18:30, T-H24
Search for Sub-Relativistic Magnetic Monopoles in IceCube — •Christian Dappen1, Jakob Böttcher1, Sukeerthi Dharani2, and Christopher Wiebusch1 for the IceCube collaboration — 1RWTH Aachen University - Physics Institute III B, Aachen, Germany — 2Universität Hamburg
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects high energy 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 as relics from the very early Universe. For masses on the GUT-scale (1014 GeV - 1017 GeV) those monopoles would move at sub-relativistic 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 with separations of centimeters up to tens of meters. This pattern is recorded by a dedicated slow particle trigger at a rate of ≈ 10 Hz. For the separation of signal from background events, we have developed a chain of boosted decision trees (BDTs) which are trained with simulated monopole signal and data-driven background events. In each level of the BDT, a background rejection of about 99% is achieved which allows a more efficient training of the subsequent BDT for rare backgrounds. Based on the final selection, the sensitivity is estimated and the analysis is evaluated with an experimental dataset of five months.