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Safe Experimentation in Optical Levitation of Charged Droplets Using Remote Labs

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Search for millicharged particles using optically levitated microspheres.

David C Moore¹, Alexander D Rider¹, Giorgio Gratta¹

¹Physics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

Physical Review Letters

|January 3, 2015

Summary

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Researchers searched for stable, charged particles in matter using levitated microspheres. No evidence was found, setting new limits on the abundance of such particles in bulk materials.

Area of Science:

Experimental physics
Particle physics
Materials science

Background:

Searching for new stable particles beyond the Standard Model is a key goal in physics.
Previous searches have primarily focused on high-energy collisions or astrophysical observations.
Direct detection of weakly interacting or low-charge particles in bulk matter remains challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

To conduct a direct search for stable particles with fractional electric charge (≳10^-5 e) within bulk matter.
To establish new experimental limits on the abundance of such hypothetical particles.
To demonstrate the utility of optically levitated microspheres in high vacuum for sensitive force measurements.

Main Methods:

Utilizing optically levitated dielectric microspheres in a high-vacuum environment.

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Performing sensitive force measurements on a total sample mass of 1.4 nanograms.

Analyzing the data to search for deviations indicative of charged particle interactions.

Main Results:

No statistically significant evidence for stable particles with charge ≳10^-5 e was detected.
An upper limit on the abundance per nucleon of 2.5×10^-14 at the 95% confidence level was established for the tested material.
The experiment successfully demonstrated the capability for sensitive force detection using levitated microspheres.

Conclusions:

The study provides the first direct experimental constraints on the abundance of single particles with fractional charge (≲0.1e) bound in macroscopic matter.
The results exclude a significant parameter space for certain theoretical models predicting such particles.
Optically levitated microspheres offer a promising platform for future precision measurements in fundamental physics and materials science.