Kavli Affiliate: Peter W. Graham
| First 5 Authors: Asher Berlin, Asher Berlin, , ,
| Summary:
A terrestrial population of room-temperature millicharged particles can arise
if they make up a dark matter subcomponent or if they are light enough to be
produced in cosmic ray air showers. In a companion paper, we showed that a
simple electrified shell acts as an efficient accumulator for such particles,
parametrically enhancing their local density by many orders of magnitude. Here
we demonstrate that Cavendish tests of Coulomb’s Law, performed since the late
18th century, function as both quasistatic accumulators and detectors for this
overdensity. Reinterpretations of these past Cavendish tests thus provide some
of the strongest bounds on a terrestrial millicharge population. We also
propose surrounding a Cavendish test with an additional charged shell, which
significantly improves the sensitivity and can even enable detection of the
irreducible density of millicharged particles generated from cosmic rays. Using
decades-old technology, this can outperform future accelerator searches for
sub-GeV masses.
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