Search for Relativistic Magnetic Monopoles with Eight Years of IceCube Data
IceCube Collaboration, M. Ackermann, J. Adams, J. A. Aguilar, M. Ahlers, M. Ahrens, Cyril Martin Alispach, A. A. Alves, N. M. Amin, R. An, K. Andeen, T. Anderson, G. Anton, C. Argüelles, Yosuke Ashida, Spencer Axani, X. Bai, Aswathi Balagopal, Anastasia Maria Barbano, S. W. Barwick, Benjamin Bastian, Vedant Basu, S. Baur, R. Bay, J. J. Beatty, K.-H. Becker, J. Becker Tjus, Chiara Bellenghi, S. BenZvi, D. Berley, E. Bernardini, D. Besson, G. Binder, D. Bindig, E. Blaufuss, Summer Blot, Matthias Boddenberg, Federico Bontempo, Jürgen Borowka, S. Böser, O. Botner, J. Böttcher, Etienne Bourbeau, Federica Bradascio, J. Braun, S. Bron, Jannes Brostean-Kaiser, Sally-Ann Browne, A. Burgman, Ryan T. Burley, Raffaela Busse, Michael Campana, Erin Carnie-Bronca, C. Chen, Z. Chen, D. Chirkin, K. Choi, Brian Clark, K. Clark, Lew Classen, Alan Coleman, G. H. Collin, J. M. Conrad, Paul Coppin, Pablo Correa, D. F. Cowen, R. Cross, Christian Dappen, Pranav Dave, C. De Clercq, James DeLaunay, DeLaunay, J. J., H.-P. Dembinski, Kunal Deoskar, Abhishek Desai, P. Desiati, K. D. de Vries, G. de Wasseige, M. de With, T. DeYoung, Dharani, S., A. Diaz, J. C. Díaz–Vélez, Markus Dittmer, Hrvoje Dujmović, M. Dunkman, M. A. DuVernois, Emily Dvorak, Thomas Ehrhardt, P. Eller, R. Engel, Erpenbeck, H., John Evans, P. A. Evenson, Kwok Lung Fan, A. R. Fazely, Nora Feigl, Sebastian Fiedlschuster, Aaron Fienberg, K. Filimonov
Abstract
We present an all-sky 90% confidence level upper limit on the cosmic flux of relativistic magnetic monopoles using 2886 days of IceCube data. The analysis was optimized for monopole speeds between 0.750c and 0.995c, without any explicit restriction on the monopole mass. We constrain the flux of relativistic cosmic magnetic monopoles to a level below 2.0×10$^{-19}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ sr$^{-1}$ over the majority of the targeted speed range. This result constitutes the most strict upper limit to date for magnetic monopoles with β$≳$0.8 and up to β$∼$0.995 and fills the gap between existing limits on the cosmic flux of nonrelativistic and ultrarelativistic magnetic monopoles.