Rare Particle Searches with the high altitude SLIM experiment

Balestra, S.; Cecchini, S.; Fabbri, F.; Giacomelli, G.; Giacomelli, R.; Giorgini, M.; Kumar, A.; Manzoor, S.; McDonald, J.; Margiotta, A.; Medinaceli, E.; Nogales, J.; Patrizii, L.; Popa, V.; Quereshi, I.; Saavedra, O.; Sher, G.; Shahzad, M.; Spurio, M.; Ticona, R.; Togo, V.; Velarde, A.; Zanini, A.

Rare Particle Searches with the high altitude SLIM experiment

Authors

Description

The search for rare particles in the cosmic radiation remains one of the main aims of non-accelerator particle astrophysics. Experiments at high altitude allow lower mass thresholds with respect to detectors at sea level or underground. The SLIM experiment is a large array of nuclear track detectors located at the Chacaltaya High Altitude Laboratory (5290 m a.s.l.). The preliminary results from the analysis of a part of the first 236 sq.m exposed for more than 3.6 y are here reported. The detector is sensitive to Intermediate Mass Magnetic Monopoles and to SQM nuggets and Q-balls, which are possible Dark Matter candidates.
Paper presented by G. Giacomelli at the European Conference on High Energy Physics, July 21-27 2005, Lisboa, Portugal