Results of a Search for Fractional Charges on Mercury Drops

Abstract

Results are presented from a search for fractional charges on mercury drops. About 100 000 drops have been measured, comprising 60 Mg of refined mercury and 115 jxg of native mercury. No fractionally charged drops were observed in this sample.

The confinement problem in lattice gauge theory

“…The place to begin is with an experimental result: the apparent absence of free quarks in Nature. Free quark searches are basically searches for particles with fractional electric charge [4,5], and the term "quark confinement" in this context is sometimes equated with the absence of free (hadronic) particles with electric charge ± 1 3 e and ± 2 3 e. But this exper-imental fact, from a modern perspective, is not so very fundamental. It may not even be true.…”

“…Nevertheless, the point which is made is that the vortex theory is by no means incompatible with Casimir scaling, which is an effect that may be attributed to finite vortex thickness. 5 As a test of the relation between Casimir scaling and center vortices, one may examine the string tension of vortex-limited Wilson loops W adj 0 (C) in the adjoint representation. Excluding vortices from the middle of the loop should greatly reduce the adjoint string tension in the Casimir-scaling regime, if indeed vortex cores are correlated with the Casimir scaling effect.…”

The search for elementary particles with fractional electric charge and the philosophy of speculative experiments

“…1, was developed from the technique used in fractional charge searches at San Francisco State University, [8][9][10][11] which in turn were modern versions of the original work of Millikan. 12-14 Two flat, horizontal, circular, metal plates about 1 cm apart have small diameter holes along their central axis.…”

Searches for Fractional Electric Charge in Terrestrial Materials

“…been carried out in this way, but the method is inherently limited by the fact that electric field levitation restricts the mass of the individual particles of material to '" 10-9 g, and hence the total mass tested to typically '" 10-7 g. This technique has in fact recently been considerably extended by automation, allowing testing rates up to '" I S-I (total mass up to '" 10-4 g day-I) to be achieved (33,34), but it would be difficult to improve further on this.…”