Related papers: New bounds on millicharged particles from cosmolog…
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…
The upper bound on the number of relativistic species present at nucleosynthesis has been used to constrain particles with electric charge $\epsilon e$ ($10^{-8} < \epsilon <1$). We correct the bound previously calculated for milli-charged…
It is known that the kinetic mixing of photon and another U(1)_ex gauge boson can introduce millicharged particles. Millicharged particles $f$ of mass 0.1 eV can explain the PVLAS experiment. We suggest a temperature dependent gauge…
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…
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…
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…
We revisit cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on the abundance of millicharged particles based on the Planck data. The stringent limit Omega_{mcp}h^2 < 0.001 (95% CL) may be set using the CMB data alone if millicharged particles…
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…
We study the impact on the Sun of an exotic energy-loss channel caused by plasmon decay into fermionic minicharged particles with charge $\epsilon e$ and mass $m_f$. We compare solar models with this extra emission to helioseismological and…
We update the bounds on fermions with electric charge $\epsilon e$ and mass $m_\epsilon$. For $m_\epsilon\lsim m_e$ we find $10^{-15}\lsim\epsilon<1$ is excluded by laboratory experiments, astrophysics and cosmology. For larger masses, the…
Many weakly interacting sub-electronVolt particles (WISPs) are easily accommodated in extensions of the standard model. Generally the strongest bounds on their existence come from stellar evolution and cosmology, where to the best of our…
A search for stable and long-lived massive particles of electric charge |Q/e|=1 or fractional charges of 2/3, 4/3, and 5/3 is reported using data collected by the OPAL detector at LEP, at centre-of-mass energies from 130 to 209 GeV. These…
We have constrained the charge-mass ($\varepsilon-m$) phase space of millicharged particles through the simulation of the rotational evolution of neutron stars, where an extra slow-down effect due to the accretions of millicharged dark…
The extreme properties of neutron stars provide unique opportunities to put constraints on new particles and interactions. In this paper, we point out a few interesting ideas that place constraints on light millicharged fermions, with…
Primordial magnetic fields (PMFs), which were generated in the early Universe before recombination, affect the motion of plasma and then the cosmic microwave background and the matter power spectrum. We consider constraints on PMFs with a…
We study the production of exotic millicharged particles (MCPs) from cosmic ray-atmosphere collisions which constitutes a permanent MCP production source for all terrestrial experiments Our calculation of the MCP flux can be used to…
We consider nuclear gamma decays and $\gamma$-emitting reactions that can be an efficient source of hypothetical millicharged particles ($\chi$). In particular, we revisit the production of millicharged particles in nuclear reactor…
Energy injected into the Cosmic Microwave Background at redshifts z<10^6 will distort its spectrum permanently. In this paper we discuss the distortion caused by annihilations of relic particles. We use the observational bounds on…
We calculate the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectrum in models with millicharged particles of electric charge q\sim 10^{-6}-10^{-1} in units of electron charge. We find that a large region of the parameter space for the…
Most embeddings of the Standard Model into a more unified theory, in particular the ones based on supergravity or superstrings, predict the existence of a hidden sector of particles which have only very weak interactions with the visible…