Abstract: We report on a search for magnetic monopoles (MMs) produced in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions during Run 1 of the LHC. The beam pipe surrounding the interaction region of the CMS experiment was exposed to 184.07 μb-1 – 1 of Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV center-of-mass energy per collision in December 2011, before being removed in 2013. It was scanned by the MoEDAL experiment using a SQUID magnetometer to search for trapped MMs. No MM signal was observed. The two distinctive features of this search are the use of a trapping volume very close to the collision point and ultrahigh magnetic fields generated during the heavy-ion run that could produce MMs via the Schwinger effect. These two advantages allowed setting the first reliable, world-leading mass limits on MMs with high magnetic charge. In particular, the established limits are the strongest available in the range between 2 and 45 Dirac units, excluding MMs with masses of up to 80 GeV at a 95% confidence level.

Abstract: This search for magnetic monopoles (MMs) and high electric charge objects (HECOs) with spins 0, 1/2, and 1, uses for the first time the full MoEDAL detector, exposed to 6.46 fb(-1) proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV. The results are interpreted in terms of Drell-Yan and photon-fusion pair production. Mass limits on direct production of MMs of up to 10 Dirac magnetic charges and HECOs with electric charge in the range 10e to 400e, were achieved. The charge limits placed on MM and HECO production are currently the strongest in the world. MoEDAL is the only LHC experiment capable of being directly calibrated for highly ionizing particles using heavy ions and with a detector system dedicated to definitively measuring magnetic charge.

Abstract: We present here two concrete examples of models where a sub-TeV scale breaking of their respective T-13 and A(5) flavor symmetries is able to account for the recently observed discrepancy in the muon anomalous magnetic moment, (g – 2)(mu). Similarities in the flavor structures of the charged-lepton Yukawa matrix and dipole matrix yielding (g – 2)(mu) give rise to strong constraints on low-scale flavor models when bounds from lepton flavor violation (LFV) are imposed. These constraints place stringent limits on the off- diagonal Yukawa structure, suggesting a mostly (quasi)diagonal texture for models with a low flavor breaking scale A(f). We argue that many of the popular flavor models in the literature designed to explain the fermion masses and mixings are not suitable for reproducing the observed discrepancy in (g – 2)(mu), which requires a delicate balance of maintaining a low flavor scale while simultaneously satisfying strong LFV constraints.

Abstract: 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 x 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.

Abstract: Motivated by the recent Xenon1T result, we study a leptophilic flavor-dependent anomaly-free axionlike particle (ALP) and its effects on charged-lepton flavor violation. We present two representative models. The first one considers that the ALP origins from the flavon that generates the charged-lepton masses. The second model assumes a larger flavor symmetry such that more general mixings in the charged-lepton are possible, while maintaining flavor-dependent ALP couplings. We find that a keV ALP explaining the Xenon1T result is still viable for lepton flavor violation and stellar cooling astrophysical limits. On the other hand, if the Xenon1T result is confirmed, future charged-lepton flavor violation measurements can be complementary to probe such a possibility.