In a new result from the ATLAS Collaboration, physicists analysed the first Run-3 heavy-ion collision data collected in the autumn of 2023. Specifically researchers looked at “ultraperipheral” collisions, where ions pass at a distance precluding hadronic interactions yet close enough to interact through electromagnetic fields.

In a new study presented at the EPS-HEP 2023 conference, the ATLAS Collaboration combed through the full LHC Run-2 dataset (recorded 2015-2018) in search for magnetic monopoles and HECOs (see Figure 1). The result places some of the tightest limits yet on the production rate of magnetic monopoles.