Abstract
We discuss a novel detection technique for millicharged dark matter that makes use of existing light-shining-through-wall (LSW) experiments searching for massive dark photons. Since millicharged particles interact with both the visible and dark sectors, a small background of such particles enables the search for visible signals even in the limit of a massless dark photon. Furthermore, for sufficiently large couplings, a small dark matter subcomponent consisting of millicharged particles can have a terrestrial abundance that is significantly enhanced with respect to its galactic abundance. We leverage this fact to show that in certain parts of parameter space, future runs of the LSW Dark SRF experiment can be used to set the strongest limits on millicharged relics.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Hari Ramani for providing the appropriately re-scaled constraints on mCPs from ion traps appearing in figure 3. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) under contract number DE-AC02-07CH11359. Fermilab is operated by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The work of SARE was supported by SNF Ambizione grant PZ00P2_193322, New frontiers from sub-eV to super-TeV. The work of JIR is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported in part by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities.
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Berlin, A., D’Agnolo, R.T., Ellis, S.A.R. et al. Signals of millicharged dark matter in light-shining-through-wall experiments. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 17 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2023)017
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2023)017