• Accepted Paper

Search for light-mass fractionally charged particles in space with DAMPE the experiment

F. Alemanno et al.

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 7 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jrp2-wcgm

Abstract

Free Fractionally Charged Particles (FCPs) are predicted by some theories beyond or extending to the standard model. FCPs have been widely searched for by underground and space-based experiments based on the assumption of heavy lepton-like particles. However, there is a paucity of research focusing on light-mass FCPs (LFCPs) in the sub-MeV mass range. In this work, we report a search for LFCPs in primary high-energy cosmic rays, based on observational data from the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) satellite. This study utilizes ten years on-orbit data of DAMPE to search for LFCPs with mass in the range of 0.2MeV/c2 to 1MeV/c2 and a charge of 23e. No LFCP candidate is observed. The upper flux limit of LFCPs with a mass of 0.5 MeV/c2 and a charge of 23e is determined to be $\rm 5.0 \times 10^{-11}\,cm^{-2}sr^{-1}s^{-1}$ at the $\rm 90\%$ confidence level.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation