The Baikal underwater neutrino telescope: design, performance and first results

The deep underwater Cherenkov neutrino telescope NT-200 is currently under construction at Lake Baikal. The "subdetectors" NT-36 (1993-95) and NT-72 (1995-96) have been operating successfully over 3 years. Various techniques have been developed to search for magnetic monopoles with these arrays. Here we describe a method used to detect superheavy slowly moving (beta = v/c = 0.00001 - 0.001) monopoles catalyzing baryon decay. We present results obtained from the preliminary analysis of the data taken with NT-36 detector in 1993. Furthermore, possibilities to observe faster (beta = 0.2 - 1) monopoles via other effects are discussed