Search for sub-millicharged particles at J-PARC

Abstract

We studied the feasibility of an experiment searching for sub-millicharged particles ($\chi$s) using 30 GeV proton fixed-target collisions at J-PARC. The detector is composed of two layers of stacked scintillator bars and PMTs and is proposed to be installed 280 m from the target. The main background is a random coincidence between two layers due to dark counts in PMTs, which can be reduced to a negligible level using the timing of the proton beam. With $N_{\text{POT}}=10^{22}$ which corresponds to running the experiment for three years, the experiment provides sensitivity to $\chi$s with the charge down to $5\times 10^{-5}$ in $m_{\chi }<0.2$ $\text{GeV}/{\text{c}}^2$ and $8\times 10^{-4}$ in $m_{\chi }<1.6$ $\text{GeV}/{\text{c}}^2$. This is the regime largely uncovered by the previous experiments. We also explored a few detector designs to achieve an optimal sensitivity to $\chi$s. The photoelectron yield is the main driver, but the sensitivity does not have a strong dependence on the detector configuration in the sub-millicharge regime.

11 pages, 3 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2007.06329