Direct Detection of Millicharged Particles from Supernovae

Abstract

This work proposes a new terrestrial probe for millicharged particles (mCPs) and demonstrates promising discovery prospects. mCPs can be copiously produced in core-collapse supernovae (SNe), and a fraction may escape, travel to Earth and yield distinct signals. The mCP mass induces a time-of-flight (ToF) delay relative to the SN neutrino burst, opening a clean search window after the neutrino signal has passed. We compute the mCP-induced electron-recoil signals at XENONnT, JUNO, DUNE, and Hyper-Kamiokande for benchmark SN scenarios, and find that for $\epsilon =10^{-9}$ and sub-MeV to MeV-scale masses, more than 10 events per year can be detected. This search can improve upon existing SN cooling bound on $\epsilon$ by up to an order of magnitude.

5+7 pages, 5 figures