Millicharged Dark Matter Detection with Ion Traps

We propose the use of trapped ions for detection millicharged dark matter. Millicharged particles will scatter off ions, giving a signal either in individual events or overall heating rate ions. Ion traps have several properties that make them ideal detectors such signal. First, ion demonstrated significant isolation from environment, greatly reducing background and event rates. Second, can low thresholds energy deposition, down to approximately nanoelectronvolt range. Third, since are charged, they naturally large cross sections scattering with particles, this being further enhanced by velocities thermalized particles. Despite ion-trap setups optimized other goals, we find existing measurements put new constraints on matter many orders magnitude beyond previous bounds. For example, mass mQ=10GeV charge 10−3 electron charge, limit local density be nQ≲1cm−3, factor 108 better than current constraints. Future dedicated experiments could reach even into unexplored parameter space.Received 27 August 2021Accepted 1 February 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.010330Published American Physical Society under terms Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution work must maintain attribution author(s) published article's title, journal citation, DOI.Published SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasDark matterMeasurement-based quantum computingParticle matterTechniquesDark detectorsAtomic, Molecular & OpticalParticles Fields