Speaker
Description
The search for millicharged particles (mCPs), which naturally arise in many Dark Sector models offering potential Dark Matter candidates, provides a unique opportunity to probe extensions of the Standard Model (SM). The milliQan experiment is an ongoing search for mCPs located just above the CMS experiment at the LHC and leverages this proximity along shielding from most SM backgrounds to gain sensitivity to mCPs in the mass range of 0.01 - 45 GeV, while having sensitivity to charges as low as 0.003e. To cover this wide parameter space, two complementary detector designs have been implemented: long scintillating bars optimized for low-charge/low-mass mCPs, and wide scintillating slabs targeting higher-charge/higher-mass regimes. Similar milliqan based detector concepts have been deployed in different locations in recent few years, and provide complementary reach: the FORMOSA detector in the ATLAS forward region enhances sensitivity to low-mass/low-charge mCPs, while the SUBMET experiment at J-PARC extends coverage to the extremely low-charge regime using beam-dump data.
This talk will present the first milliQan results, using an integrated luminosity of 125 fb−1 of Run 3 LHC data, as well as updates on the analyses as they are being completed during 2026. It will also highlight projections for the full Run 3 dataset, and the latest status of the FORMOSA and SUBMET searches. Recently the inclusion of a milliqan-type of detector has also been studied for future experimental set-ups such as the SHiP experiment at CERN, Spin-Quest at FNAL and LANSCE at Los Alamos.
| Primary Abstract Topic | Experiment: Other Dark Matter |
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