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  • Featured in Physics
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Geomagnetic Constraints on Millicharged Dark Matter

Ariel Arza1,2,*, Yuanlin Gong1,3,*, Jing Shu4,5,6,†, Lei Wu1,2,‡, Qiang Yuan3,7,§, and Bin Zhu8,∥

  • 1Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Physics, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
  • 2Nanjing Key Laboratory of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Nanjing 210023, China
  • 3Key Laboratory of Dark Matter and Space Astronomy, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210023, China
  • 4School of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 5Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 6Beijing Laser Acceleration Innovation Center, Huairou, Beijing 101400, China
  • 7School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
  • 8School of Physics, Yantai University, Yantai 264005, China

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: jshu@pku.edu.cn
  • ‡Contact author: leiwu@njnu.edu.cn
  • §Contact author: yuanq@pmo.ac.cn
  • ∥Contact author: zhubin@mail.nankai.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 041001 – Published 27 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/8xqd-dbrz

Abstract

Millicharged particles are well-motivated dark matter candidates arising in many extensions of the standard model. We show that, despite their tiny coupling em to photons, millicharged dark matter (mDM) in the Earth’s geomagnetic field can generate a quasistatic, monochromatic magnetic signal with angular frequency twice the mDM mass. Using null results from the SuperMAG and SNIPE Hunt collaborations, we constrain the effective charge of bosonic mDM in the mass range 10−18−10−14  eV. The resulting upper bounds exceed stellar cooling constraints by over 13 orders of magnitude, demonstrating the power of this method.

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Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

synopsis

Earth’s Magnetic Field as Dark-Matter Sensor

Published 27 January, 2026

Dark matter having a small electric charge would presumably generate a magnetic-field variation on Earth’s surface, but observations find no such signal.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 041001– Published 27 January, 2026
  • Received 16 March 2025
  • Revised 31 July 2025
  • Accepted 8 December 2025
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