A University of Alberta physicist is heading up a Large Hadron Collider project to find the elusive monopole, the “long-lost brother'” of the electron, which could have been right under the world’s nose this whole time.
James Pinfold is leading the particle physics experiment Monopole and Exotics Detector (MoEDAL), the only Canada-led collider experiment in the world. His team in Edmonton this summer broke open the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) million-dollar beampipe, where the single-pole magnet could have been hiding all along.
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After a year of negotiations with CERN, the beampipe was transported from Switzerland to Edmonton as a donation earlier this summer, where the team proceeded to dissect it. The parts of the beampipe, made of the metal beryllium, were then transported back to CERN in approximately 50 packets.
The beampipe is 2.5 metres of pipe that contained collisions nearly as powerful as the Big Bang. Now, the smaller pieces can then be tested for magnetic fields more effectively than if the beampipe were whole.
Magnets have always been known to have two poles, Pinfold explains, but many theories have predicted the existence of a monopole, the discovery of which could be “evidence for a deeper underlying theory” of physics if proven.
“When (monopoles) travel through the beampipe they never get out, and of course, that would mean that we can never detect them in our detectors,” said Pinfold at his U of A office last week. “So this could be a reason why we haven’t seen them.”
Being highly charged, the monopoles would most likely lose energy very quickly and never leave the beampipe and enter the collider at all, he explains.
“We have the opportunity to expand our physics horizons,” said Pinfold, a founding member of the ATLAS particle physics experiment at CERN, which discovered the Higgs-Boson elementary particle in 2012.
“The beampipe could be the place where the monopole is hiding from us,” said Pinfold.
Along with four other faculty members and three students at the U of A, Pinfold is collaborating with nearly 70 other researchers around the world on the project. But he is confident there will be something to find — and if not a monopole, something else that will advance understandings of particle physics.
“If found, it’s going to be one of the first physics discoveries that will actually go into the ordinary textbooks for schoolchildren and for undergraduates,” said Pinfold. “Right now, you only learn to see magnetism as a dipole, and that would be gone.”
Testing will begin in 2021 when CERN is to reopen after a temporary shutdown for upgrades and repair of the Large Hadron Collider. Pinfold is excited for what it could mean for Canadian leadership in physics in the future, as well.
“You can never tell where the next discovery will come from,” he said.