This award will support a group from the University of California, Berkeley, who is involved in a research program in high energy particle physics. The research includes a search for magnetic monopoles and for other hypothetical highly ionizing particles that might be produced in e+e- collisions at the LEP (CERN) collider. This search will be done using etched plastic track detectors. It will also consist of the completion of the analysis of data from a balloon-borne search of extragalactic heavy antinuclei in the cosmic rays using plastic track detectors, plastic scintillators and Cerenkov radiators. A new search will also be made for charged massive particles in the cosmic rays, or CHAMPS, that are speculated to have survived annihilation in the early universe and may be the dark matter of our Galaxy. This search will also be done by using etched plastic detectors.
