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Test of electric charge conservation in dark matter direct detection experiments

Z. H. Zhang1,2,*, X. P. Geng3,†, J. W. Hu4, and Z. H. Zhang5

  • *Contact author: zhenhua@bnu.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: gxp18@tsinghua.org.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 035032 – Published 20 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/trv7-c28m

Abstract

Electric charge conservation (ECC) is typically taken as an axiom in the standard model. Searching for small violations with high-performance experiments could lead us to new physics. In this work, we tested “invisible” electric charge nonconservation events with 1.16  ton·yr electron recoil data from the XENONnT experiment. There was no statistically significant signal, and the limit was updated to τ(e−→νe+ν¯e+νe)>8.0×1027  yr (90% confidence level). This work increases the limit by 2 orders of magnitude and shows that dark matter direct detection experiments have great potential for further ECC testing.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 035032– Published 20 August, 2025
  • Received 3 November 2024
  • Revised 11 June 2025
  • Accepted 25 July 2025
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