New limit set on cosmic-ray monopole flux by a large-area superconducting magnetic-induction detector

A search for cosmic-ray magnetic monopoles has been conducted using a fully coincident superconducting induction detector consisting of six independent high-order gradiometer coils forming the surfaces of a rectangular parallelepiped. The detector had an effective area for isotropic flux averaged over 4 sr of 1.0 m2. Data have been collected from October 1986 to January 1989 with an accumulated live time of 13 410 h. No monopole candidate events were seen, setting a new lower monopole flux limit for induction detectors of 3.8×10-13 cm-2 s-1 sr-1 at the 90% confidence level. © 1990 The American Physical Society.