Speaker
Description
Extensive air showers induced by ultra-relativistic magnetic monopoles are expected to exhibit a pronounced deficit of muons compared to standard cosmic-ray events. We exploit this distinctive phenomenological signature to search for monopoles using 4 years of observational data from the LHAASO-KM2A array. By capitalizing on the array's dense, overlapping coverage of electromagnetic and muon detectors, our analysis achieves exceptional discrimination against the vast cosmic-ray background. Finding no evidence of monopole signals, we set stringent 90\% confidence level (C.L.) upper limits on the isotropic flux. The derived constraints bound the flux below $2.0\times10^{-16}~\mathrm{cm^{-2}~s^{-1}~sr^{-1}}$ at a Lorentz factor $\gamma = 10^{5}$, and reach $1.8\times10^{-18}~\mathrm{cm^{-2}~s^{-1}~sr^{-1}}$ at $\gamma = 10^{7}$. By exploring previously unconstrained kinematic regimes, this work delivers highly competitive results that strongly complement current bounds from other experimental techniques.
