Related papers: Electric discharge in vacuum by minicharged partic…
A terrestrial population of millicharged particles that interact significantly with normal matter can arise if they make up a dark matter subcomponent or if they are light enough to be produced in cosmic ray air showers. Such particles…
Does gravity care about electric charge? Precision tests of the weak equivalence principle achieve remarkable sensitivity but deliberately minimize electric charge on test masses, leaving this fundamental question experimentally open. We…
Charged dust particles form structures which are extended in the vertical direction in the electrode sheath of a rf discharge when confined within a glass box. The charge on each particle as a function of height varies due to the changing…
Experiments are performed in which dust particles are levitated at varying heights above the powered electrode in a RF plasma discharge by changing the discharge power. The trajectories of particles dropped from the top of the discharge…
We use the isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background to place stringent constraints on a possible electrical charge asymmetry of the universe. We find the excess charge per baryon to be $q_{e-p}<10^{-26}e$ in the case of a uniform…
We study the energy delivered through a small-resistance series ``victim'' load during electrostatic discharge events in air. For gap lengths over 1~mm, the fraction of the stored energy delivered is mostly gap-length independent, with a…
We consider current observational constraints on the electromagnetic charge of dark matter. The velocity dependence of the scattering cross-section through the photon gives rise to qualitatively different constraints than standard dark…
Some models of inelastic dark matter posit the existence of bound states under some new $U(1)'$ gauge symmetry. If this new dark photon kinetically mixes with the standard model photon, then the constituent particles in these bound states…
In some models of $\gamma$-ray bursts super-strong electric fields ($E\sim 10^{14} {\rm statvolt cm}^{-1}$) have been surmized. Such large fields may provide copious pair production through vacuum polarization. Here we examine various…
Relativistic millicharged particles ($\chi_q$) have been proposed in various extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics. We consider the scenarios where they are produced at nuclear reactor core and via interactions of cosmic-rays…
This article presents an investigation of a transient (30 {\mu}s - 5 ms) electrical discharge in metal vapour with low voltage (< 50 V) and current (< 1 A), drawn between two separating electrodes. Discharges of this type are rarely…
We explore the cosmology and phenomenology of millicharged and millicharge-like dark matter with masses from 1 eV to 10 keV and charges of $10^{-18}$ to $10^{-14}$. Dark matter in this mass range cannot be thermally produced, but can arise…
The high surface sensitivity and controlled surface charge state of submicron sized droplets is exploited to study low-energy electron transport through liquid interfaces using photoelectron imaging. Already a few charges on a droplet are…
Microdischarges formed in bubbles immersed in liquids are of interest for materials synthesis and chemical conversion applications in the frame of plasma-driven electrochemistry. A key challenge associated with controlling such processes is…
Equilibrating gravitation by electric forces, microparticles can be confined in the plasma sheath above suitably biased local electrodes.Their position depends on the detailed structure of the plasma sheath and on the charge that the…
We propose a novel idea to discover millicharged particles (mCPs) captured by the earth during its existence. It has been demonstrated that the mCPs accumulation inside the earth leads to the enhancement of its number density much larger…
Polarimetric experiments driven by the strong field of a circularly polarized laser wave can become a powerful tool to limit the parameter space of not yet detected hidden-photons and minicharged particles associated with extra U(1) gauge…
We show that a laser beam can be diffracted by a more concentrated light pulse due to quantum vacuum effects. We compute analytically the intensity pattern in a realistic experimental configuration, and discuss how it can be used to measure…
Charged liquid microdroplets have generated significant interest recently due to the observation of chemical reaction rate enhancement by orders of magnitude. Droplet charging by plasma irradiation has been observed along with significantly…
Instability of electron-positron vacuum in strong electric fields is studied. First, falling to the Coulomb center is discussed at $Z>137/2$ for a spinless boson and at $Z>137$ for electron. Then, focus is concentrated on description of…