The MoEDAL experiment - a new light on LHC physics

Abstract

In 2010 the MoEDAL experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was unanimously approved by CERN’s Research Board to start data taking in 2015. MoEDAL is a pioneering experiment designed to search for highly ionizing messengers of new physics such as magnetic monopoles or massive (pseudo-)stable charged particles. Its groundbreaking physics program defines a number of scenarios that yield potentially revolutionary insights into foundational questions. MoEDAL’s purpose is to meet such far-reaching challenges at the frontier of the field. The innovative MoEDAL detector is tuned to the prospect of discovery physics. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Point 8 on the LHC ring, has a dual nature. First, it acts like a giant camera, comprised of nuclear track detectors - analyzed offline by ultra fast scanning microscopes – sensitive only to new physics. Second, it is uniquely able to trap the particle harbingers of new physics beyond the Standard Model for further study. MoEDAL’s radiation environment is monitored by a state-of-the-art real-time TimePix pixel detector array.