Millicharged Condensates on Earth

TL;DR

This paper explores how terrestrial electric fields can detect or exclude ultralight bosonic particles with tiny charges, introducing methods to produce and identify condensates of such particles using electromagnetic sensors.

Contribution

It proposes a novel terrestrial approach to detect ultralight millicharged particles via electric field interactions, extending beyond astrophysical constraints.

Findings

Long-range electric fields can exclude or discover ultralight millicharged particles.

Bound condensates can be produced near electrostatic generators or in the atmosphere.

Detection is possible through precision electromagnetic sensors, especially for kinetically-mixed dark photon interactions.

Abstract

We demonstrate that long-ranged terrestrial electric fields can be used to exclude or discover ultralight bosonic particles with extremely small charge, beyond that probed by astrophysics. Bound condensates of scalar millicharged particles can be rapidly produced near electrostatic generators or in the atmosphere. If such particles directly couple to the photon, they quickly short out such electrical activity. Instead, for interactions mediated by a kinetically-mixed dark photon, the effects of this condensate are suppressed depending on the size of the kinetic mixing, but may still be directly detected with precision electromagnetic sensors. Analogous condensates can also develop in other theories involving new long-ranged forces, such as those coupled to baryon and lepton number.