Timing-Based Search for Magnetic Monopoles with the NOvA Detector on the Surface

2026/08/04 by NOvA, NOvA Collaboration
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Detector #Flux (metallurgy) #Limit (mathematics) #Magnetic flux #Magnetic monopole #Neutrino Physics Research #Nova (rocket) #Overburden #Scintillator #hep-ex

paper · pdf · doi:10.5281/zenodo.21811524

8 pages, 9 figures

arxiv created 2026/08/04 · openalex publication_date 2026/08/05 · arxiv updated 2026/08/06 · openalex created_date 2026/08/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

We report a search for a magnetic monopole component of the cosmic-ray flux in a 2743-live-day exposure of the NOvA experiment's Far Detector, a 14 kt segmented liquid scintillator detector designed primarily to observe GeV-scale electron neutrinos. No events consistent with monopoles were observed, setting an upper limit on the flux of 8× 10^-16 \mathrmcm^-2s^-1sr^-1 at 90% C.L. for monopole speed 6× 10^-4 < β < 5× 10^-3 and mass greater than 10⁹ GeV. Because of NOvA's small overburden of 3~meters-water equivalent, this constraint covers a previously unexplored low-mass region.