RESULTS FROM THE SOUDAN PROTOTYPE PROTON DECAY EXPERIMENT (MONOPOLES)

This thesis describes and discusses some of the results from the Soudan 1 nucleon decay experiment. It describes in detail the dense tracking calorimeter which is at the heart of the experiment, the active shield and ancillary apparatus. We place a lower limit on the total lifetime of the nucleon of 1.6 x 10('30) years (90% confidence level); and lower limits on (lifetime)/(branching ratio) for five proton decay modes and four neutron decay modes. We also set upper limits on the flux of superheavy grand unification magnetic monopoles of 1.3 x 10('-13) monopoles/cm('2)/s/sr (90% confidence level), over a velocity range from 2 x 10('-3) c up to c, if the monopoles do not catalyze nucleon decay. If they do, we set similar limits down to a velocity of 10('-5) c.