Searching for heavy charged relics in the Earth
Reza Ebadi, Peter W. Graham, Surjeet Rajendran, Erwin H. Tanin, Samuel S. Y. Wong
hep-ph, astro-ph.CO, hep-ex
Submitted: 2026-07-10
Comments: 21 pages, 7 figures
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We propose a method for detecting an ambient density of heavy, electrically-charged particles.
Terminology
Abstract
We propose a method for detecting an ambient density of heavy, electrically-charged particles. Such particles would impact the Earth, lose energy in terrestrial matter, and become trapped. We study the accumulation of these rare particles in multiple target materials that provide large exposure, such as water and geological rocks. We discuss strategies for concentrating the particles by centrifugation or gravitational settling, along with particle identification using mass spectrometry. This method enables the discovery of charged relics with masses 1-10 12, TeV comprising a tiny fraction of the local dark matter density, reaching down to f X about 10-20 at the lowest masses. A pathfinder experiment using only a liter of water and one centrifuge (or about m cubed and no centrifuge) operating for a month can already reach f X about 10-10 and probe new parameter space.
Sources
- Stable Massive Particles at Colliders
- Non-collider searches for stable massive particles
- The Search for Stable, Massive, Elementary Particles
- Production of massive stable particles in inflaton decay
- Supergravity with a Gravitino LSP
- Particle physics catalysis of thermal Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
- Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with Long Lived Charged Massive Particles
- Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with Bound States of Long-lived Charged Particles
- A handbook of vector-like quarks: mixing and single production
- Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis with Long-Lived Charged Slepton
- Hunting composite vector resonances at the LHC: naturalness facing data
- Bounds on long-lived charged massive particles from Big Bang nucleosynthesis
- Vector-like leptons: Higgs decays and collider phenomenology
- Review of searches for vector-like quarks, vector-like leptons, and heavy neutral leptons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV at the CMS experiment
- Review on Effects of Long-lived Negatively Charged Massive Particles on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
- Search for vector-like leptons with long-lived particle decays in the CMS muon system in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV
- White Dwarf Bounds on CHAMPs
- Bounds on Universal Extra Dimensions
- Dark Matter
- Stable Bound States of Asymmetric Dark Matter
Related papers
- Classification of g-modes for neutron stars with a strong transition: Novel universal relation including slow stable hybrid stars
- Higgsino Dark Matter Interpretation of the LUX-ZEPLIN 248 keV Nuclear-Recoil Event
- A Unified Bogoliubov Approach to Primordial Gravitational Waves: From Inflation to Reheating
- Probing Memory-Burdened Primordial Black Holes with High-Energy Neutrinos
- Enhanced Dark Matter Quantum Sensing via Phase-Space Geometric Interferometry
- Axions as Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Dark Radiation