Search for magnetic monopoles in polar volcanic rocks

K Bendtz; D Milstead; H-P Hächler; A M Hirt; P Mermod; P Michael; T Sloan; C Tegner; S B Thorarinsson

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.121803

Search for magnetic monopoles in polar volcanic rocks

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Mar 22;110(12):121803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.121803. Epub 2013 Mar 22.

Authors

K Bendtz¹, D Milstead¹, H-P Hächler², A M Hirt², P Mermod³, P Michael⁴, T Sloan⁵, C Tegner⁶, S B Thorarinsson⁷

Affiliations

¹ Fysikum, Stockholm University, SE 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
² Department of Earth Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
³ Département de Physique Nucléaire et Corpusculaire, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
⁴ Department of Geosciences, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, Lancaster University, LA1 4YW Lancaster, United Kingdom.
⁶ Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
⁷ Nordic Volcanological Center, Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland.

PMID: 25166793
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.121803

Abstract

For a broad range of values of magnetic monopole mass and charge, the abundance of monopoles trapped inside Earth would be expected to be enhanced in the mantle beneath the geomagnetic poles. A search for magnetic monopoles was conducted using the signature of an induced persistent current following the passage of igneous rock samples through a SQUID-based magnetometer. A total of 24.6 kg of rocks from various selected sites, among which 23.4 kg are mantle-derived rocks from the Arctic and Antarctic areas, was analyzed. No monopoles were found, and a 90% confidence level upper limit of 9.8 × 10(-5)/g is set on the monopole density in the search samples.