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Electrically charged particles can be created by the decay of strong enough electric fields, a phenomenon known as the Schwinger mechanism 1 . By electromagnetic duality, a sufficiently strong magnetic field would similarly produce magnetic monopoles, if they exist 2 . Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical fundamental particles that are predicted by several theories beyond the standard model 3 – 7 but have never been experimentally detected. Searching for the existence of magnetic monopoles via the Schwinger mechanism has not yet been attempted, but it is advantageous, owing to the possibility of calculating its rate through semi-classical techniques without perturbation theory, as well as that the production of the magnetic monopoles should be enhanced by their finite size 8 , 9 and strong coupling to photons 2 , 10 . Here we present a search for magnetic monopole production by the Schwinger mechanism in Pb–Pb heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, producing the strongest known magnetic fields in the current Universe 11 . It was conducted by the MoEDAL experiment, whose trapping detectors were exposed to 0.235 per nanobarn, or approximately 1.8 × 10 9 , of Pb–Pb collisions with 5.02-teraelectronvolt center-of-mass energy per collision in November 2018. A superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer scanned the trapping detectors of MoEDAL for the presence of magnetic charge, which would induce a persistent current in the SQUID. Magnetic monopoles with integer Dirac charges of 1, 2 and 3 and masses up to 75 gigaelectronvolts per speed of light squared were excluded by the analysis at the 95% confidence level. This provides a lower mass limit for finite-size magnetic monopoles from a collider search and greatly extends previous mass bounds. At the Large Hadron Collider, the MoEDAL experiment shows no evidence for magnetic monopoles generated via the Schwinger mechanism at integer Dirac charges below 3, and suggests a lower mass limit of 75 GeV/ c 2 .

The challenges of precision neutrino physics (i.e the study of CP violation) require measurements of absolute ν cross sections at the GeV scale with exquisite (O(1)%) precision. Such precision is presently limited to about 10% by the uncertainties on neutrino flux at the source. A reduction of this uncertainty by one order of magnitude can be achieved monitoring the positron production in the decay tunnel originating from the Ke3 decays of charged kaons in a sign and momentum selected narrow band beam. This novel technique enables the measurement of the most relevant cross-sections for CP violation (νe and ν ¯ e ) with a precision of 1% and requires a special instrumented beam-line. Such non-conventional beam-line will be developed in the framework of the ENUBET Horizon-2020 Consolidator Grant (PI A. Longhin), recently approved by the European Research Council (grant agreement N° 681647). In this poster, we will present the Project and the early experimental results on ultra-compact calorimeters that can embedded in the instrumented decay tunnel.

A search for highly electrically charged objects (HECOs) and magnetic monopoles is presented using 2.2 fb-1 of p-p collision data taken at a centre of mass energy (ECM) of 8 TeV by the MoEDAL detector during LHC’s Run-1. The data were collected using MoEDAL’s prototype Nuclear Track Detectord array and the Trapping Detector array. The results are interpreted in terms of Drell–Yan pair production of stable HECO and monopole pairs with three spin hypotheses (0, 1/2 and 1). The search provides constraints on the direct production of magnetic monopoles carrying one to four Dirac magnetic charges and with mass limits ranging from 590 GeV/c2 to 1 TeV/c2. Additionally, mass limits are placed on HECOs with charge in the range 10e to 180e, where e is the charge of an electron, for masses between 30 GeV/c2 and 1 TeV/c2.

The ENUBET project is aimed at designing and experimentally demonstrating the concept of monitored neutrino beams. These novel beams are enhanced by an instrumented decay tunnel, whose detectors reconstruct large-angle charged leptons produced in the tunnel and give a direct estimate of the neutrino flux at the source. These facilities are thus the ideal tool for high-precision neutrino cross-section measurements at the GeV scale because they offer superior control of beam systematics with respect to existing facilities. In this paper, we present the first end-to-end design of a monitored neutrino beam capable of monitoring lepton production at the single particle level. This goal is achieved by a new focusing system without magnetic horns, a 20 m normal-conducting transfer line for charge and momentum selection, and a 40 m tunnel instrumented with cost-effective particle detectors. Employing such a design, we show that percent precision in cross-section measurements can be achieved at the CERN SPS complex with existing neutrino detectors.

The ICARUS collaboration employed the 760-ton T600 detector in a successful 3-year physics run at the underground LNGS laboratory, performing a sensitive search for LSND-like anomalous ν e appearance in the CERN Neutrino to Gran Sasso beam, which contributed to the constraints on the allowed neutrino oscillation parameters to a narrow region around 1 eV 2 . After a significant overhaul at CERN, the T600 detector has been installed at Fermilab. In 2020 the cryogenic commissioning began with detector cool down, liquid argon filling and recirculation. ICARUS then started its operations collecting the first neutrino events from the booster neutrino beam (BNB) and the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beam off-axis, which were used to test the ICARUS event selection, reconstruction and analysis algorithms. ICARUS successfully completed its commissioning phase in June 2022. The first goal of the ICARUS data taking will be a study to either confirm or refute the claim by Neutrino-4 short-baseline reactor experiment. ICARUS will also perform measurement of neutrino cross sections with the NuMI beam and several Beyond Standard Model searches. After the first year of operations, ICARUS will search for evidence of sterile neutrinos jointly with the Short-Baseline Near Detector, within the Short-Baseline Neutrino program. In this paper, the main activities carried out during the overhauling and installation phases are highlighted. Preliminary technical results from the ICARUS commissioning data with the BNB and NuMI beams are presented both in terms of performance of all ICARUS subsystems and of capability to select and reconstruct neutrino events.

The capture of scintillation light emitted by liquid Argon and Xenon under molecular excitations by charged particles is still a challenging task. Here we present a first attempt to design a device able to have a sufficiently high photon detection efficiency, in order to reconstruct the path of ionizing particles. The study is based on the use of masks to encode the light signal combined with single-photon detectors, showing the capability to detect tracks over focal distances of about tens of centimeters. From numerical simulations it emerges that it is possible to successfully decode and recognize signals, even of rather complex topology, with a relatively limited number of acquisition channels. Thus, the main aim is to elucidate a proof of principle of a technology developed in very different contexts, but which has potential applications in liquid argon detectors that require a fast reading. The findings support us to think that such innovative technique could be very fruitful in a new generation of detectors devoted to neutrino physics.

A bstract The OPERA neutrino experiment at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory has measured the velocity of neutrinos from the CERN CNGS beam over a baseline of about 730 km. The measurement is based on data taken by OPERA in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. Dedicated upgrades of the CNGS timing system and of the OPERA detector, as well as a high precision geodesy campaign for the measurement of the neutrino baseline, allowed reaching comparable systematic and statistical accuracies. An arrival time of CNGS muon neutrinos with respect to the one computed assuming the speed of light in vacuum of was measured corresponding to a relative difference of the muon neutrino velocity with respect to the speed of light . The above result, obtained by comparing the time distributions of neutrino interactions and of protons hitting the CNGS target in 10.5  μ s long extractions, was confirmed by a test performed at the end of 2011 using a short bunch beam allowing to measure the neutrino time of flight at the single interaction level.

A bstract The MoEDAL experiment is designed to search for magnetic monopoles and other highly-ionising particles produced in high-energy collisions at the LHC. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Interaction Point 8 on the LHC ring, relies on two dedicated direct detection techniques. The first technique is based on stacks of nucleartrack detectors with surface area ~18m 2 , sensitive to particle ionisation exceeding a high threshold. These detectors are analysed offline by optical scanning microscopes. The second technique is based on the trapping of charged particles in an array of roughly 800 kg of aluminium samples. These samples are monitored offline for the presence of trapped magnetic charge at a remote superconducting magnetometer facility. We present here the results of a search for magnetic monopoles using a 160 kg prototype MoEDAL trapping detector exposed to 8TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC, for an integrated luminosity of 0.75 fb –1 . No magnetic charge exceeding 0:5 g D (where g D is the Dirac magnetic charge) is measured in any of the exposed samples, allowing limits to be placed on monopole production in the mass range 100 GeV≤ m ≤ 3500 GeV. Model-independent cross-section limits are presented in fiducial regions of monopole energy and direction for 1 g D  ≤ | g | ≤ 6 g D , and model-dependent cross-section limits are obtained for Drell-Yan pair production of spin-1/2 and spin-0 monopoles for 1 g D  ≤ | g | ≤ 4 g D . Under the assumption of Drell-Yan cross sections, mass limits are derived for | g | = 2 g D and | g | = 3 g D for the first time at the LHC, surpassing the results from previous collider experiments.

An event topology with two secondary vertices compatible with the decay of short-lived particles was found in the analysis of neutrino interactions in the OPERA target. The observed topology is compatible with tau neutrino charged current (CC) interactions with charm production and neutrino neutral current (NC) interactions with [Formula omitted] pair production. However, other processes can mimic this topology. A dedicated analysis was implemented to identify the underlying process. A Monte Carlo simulation was developed and complementary procedures were introduced in the kinematic reconstruction. A multivariate analysis technique was used to achieve an optimal separation of signal from background. Most likely, this event is a [Formula omitted] CC interaction with charm production, the tau and charm particle decaying into 1 prong and 2 prongs, respectively. The significance of this observation is evaluated.

The OPERA experiment, designed to perform the first observation of ν μ → ν τ oscillations in appearance mode through the detection of the τ leptons produced in ν τ charged current interactions, has collected data from 2008 to 2012. In the present paper, the procedure developed to detect τ particle decays, occurring over distances of the order of 1 mm from the neutrino interaction point, is described in detail and applied to the search for charmed hadrons, showing similar decay topologies as the τ lepton. In the analysed sample, 50 charm decay candidate events are observed while 54 ± 4 are expected, proving that the detector performance and the analysis chain applied to neutrino events are well reproduced by the OPERA simulation and thus validating the methods for ν τ appearance detection.