Magnetically amplified tunneling of the 3rd kind as a probe of minicharged particles

TL;DR

This paper proposes a laboratory experiment using magnetic fields to detect minicharged particles via an enhanced tunneling mechanism, potentially surpassing cosmological bounds and sensitive to particles with masses below the meV scale.

Contribution

It introduces a novel tunneling mechanism amplified by magnetic fields and suggests an experimental setup to detect minicharged particles beyond current cosmological constraints.

Findings

Magnetic fields significantly enhance the tunneling of minicharged particles.

The proposed experiment can explore parameter space beyond existing cosmological bounds.

Sensitivity to particles with masses in and below the meV regime.

Abstract

We show that magnetic fields significantly enhance a new tunneling mechanism in quantum-field theories with photons coupling to fermionic minicharged particles. We propose a dedicated laboratory experiment of the light-shining-through-walls type that can explore a parameter regime comparable to and even beyond the best model-independent cosmological bounds. With present-day technology, such an experiment is particularly sensitive to minicharged particles with masses in and below the meV regime.