Related papers: Electric discharge in vacuum by minicharged partic…
Particles with electric charge q < 10^(-3)e and masses in the range 1--100 MeV/c^2 are not excluded by present experiments. An experiment uniquely suited to the production and detection of such "millicharged" particles has been carried out…
Minicharged particles arise in many extensions of the Standard Model. Their contribution to the vacuum polarization modifies Coulomb's law via the Uehling potential. In this note we argue that tests for electromagnetic fifth forces can…
Low energy experiments with photons can provide deep insights into fundamental physics. In this note we concentrate on minicharged particles. We discuss how they can arise in extensions of the standard model and how we can search for them…
We report results from a search for stable particles with charge > $10^{-5}$ e in bulk matter using levitated dielectric microspheres in high vacuum. No evidence for such particles was found in a total sample of 1.4 ng, providing an upper…
Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that low energy, but high precision experiments provide a powerful and complementary window to physics beyond the Standard Model. In this note we illuminate this by using minicharged…
We propose a new experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that offers a powerful and model-independent probe for milli-charged particles. This experiment could be sensitive to charges in the range $10^{-3}e - 10^{-1}e$ for masses in…
Laser-based searches of the yet unobserved vacuum birefringence might be sensitive for very light hypothetical particles carrying a tiny fraction of the electron charge. We show that, with the help of contemporary techniques, polarimetric…
Millicharged particles (mCPs) are hypothesized particles possessing an electric charge that is a fraction of the charge of the electron. We report a search for mCPs with charges $\gtrsim 10^{-4}~e$ that improves sensitivity to their…
Electrical discharge at the smallest possible length and charge scales is not well understood. Using optical tweezers, we investigate spontaneous discharges of a single micron-scale particle levitated in air. These ``microdischarges'' have…
Analysis of space-charge effects on electron emission typically makes some assumption of continuity and smoothness, whether this is continuity of charge as in the classical derivation of the Child-Langmuir current, or the mean-field…
It has been recently suggested that the vacuum magnetic dichroism observed by the PVLAS experiment could be explained by the pair production of a new light, m ~0.1 eV, millicharged, q ~ 3 10^{-6} e, fermions. In addition, it has been…
We show that dark matter direct detection experiments are sensitive to the existence of particles with a small effective charge (for instance, via couplings to a kinetically mixed, low-mass dark photon). Our forecasts do not depend on these…
Possible extensions of the standard model of elementary particle physics suggest the existence of particles with small, unquantized electric charge. Photon initiated pair production of millicharged fermions in an external magnetic field…
In this paper we examine the puzzle of neutron formation in atmospheric discharge. While conventional explanation relies on photonuclear reactions, voltages used to recreate such discharges in the lab (1 MV) are thought to be not high…
Charge quantization has always been enigmatic. Theoretically, Millicharged particles can be an answer. The use of existing detectors, without affecting their initial mandate, is a very promising low cost new physics detector for…
The electric and magnetic fields are investigated on the basis of quantum vacuum. The analysis of the electromagnetic energy and force indicates that an electric field is a polarized distribution of the vacuum virtual dipoles, and that a…
We demonstrate that long-ranged terrestrial electric fields can be used to exclude or discover ultralight bosonic particles with extremely small charge, beyond that probed by astrophysics. Bound condensates of scalar millicharged particles…
Absorption and dispersion of probe photons in the field of a high-intensity circularly polarized laser wave are investigated. The optical theorem is applied for determining the absorption coefficients in terms of the imaginary part of the…
Gas-phase microdroplets have recently demonstrated exceptional chemical properties via suspected mechanisms such as contact electrification and surface charge pinning, producing high surface electric fields. Here, microdroplets are injected…
Within the RoadMap project we investigated the microphysical aspects of particle collisions during saltation on the Martian surface in laboratory experiments. Following the size distribution of ejected particles, their aerodynamic…