Limits on the abundance of millicharged particles bound to matter

Abstract

Millicharged particles (mCPs) are hypothesized particles possessing an electric charge that is a fraction of the charge of the electron. We report a search for mCPs with charges $\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}e$ that improves sensitivity to their abundance in matter by roughly two orders of magnitude relative to previous searches. This search is sensitive to such particles over a wide range of masses and charges for which they can form stable bound states with matter, corresponding to a gap in parameter space that is beyond the reach of previous searches from accelerators, colliders, cosmic-ray experiments, and cosmological constraints.