Searching for Millicharged Particles with Superconducting Radio-Frequency Cavities

Understand

We demonstrate that superconducting radio-frequency cavities can be used to create and detect millicharged particles and are capable of extending the reach to couplings several orders of magnitude beyond other laboratory based constraints.

• Millicharged particles are Schwinger pair-produced in driven cavities and quickly accelerated out of the cavity by the large electric fields.
• The electric current generated by these particles is detected by a receiver cavity.
• A light-shining-through-walls experiment may only need to reanalyze future data to provide new constraints on millicharged particles.