Results are presented from a search for fractional charges in water from a variety of natural sources. About 30 000 water drops have been measured, comprising 51 μg of water and dissolved materials. No evidence for fractional charge was seen

Abrams, Peter C.

Bland, Roger W.

Hodges, Christopher L.

Johnson, Robert T.

Joyce, David C.

Lindgren, Michael A.

Savage, Maureen H.

Scholz, Marion H.

Young, Betty A.

English

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Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Physics College of Arts & Sciences 8-29-1983 Search for Fractional Charges in Water David C. Joyce Peter C. Abrams Roger W. Bland Robert T. Johnson Michael A. Lindgren See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/physics  Part of the Physics Commons Recommended Citation Joyce, D. C., Abrams, P. C., Bland, R. W., Johnson, R. T., Lindgren, M. A., Savage, M. H., Scholz, M. H., Young, B. A., & Hodges, C. L. (1983). Search for Fractional Charges in Water. Physical Review Letters, 51(9), 731–734. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.51.731 Copyright © 1983 American Physical Society. Reprinted with permission. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Physics by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact rscroggin@scu.edu. Authors David C. Joyce, Peter C. Abrams, Roger W. Bland, Robert T. Johnson, Michael A. Lindgren, Maureen H. Savage, Marion H. Scholz, Betty A. Young, and Christopher L. Hodges This article is available at Scholar Commons: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/physics/40 VOLUM E 5 1, NUMBER 9 PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 29 AUGUsT 1983Search for Fractional Charges in WaterDavid C. Joyce, Peter C. Abrarns, Roger W. Bland, ~'~ Robert T. Johnson, Michael A. Lindgren,Maureen H. Savage, Marion H. Scholz, and Betty A. YoungPhysics and Astronomy DePartment, San Francisco State University, San Francisco. California 94132andChristopher L. HodgesPIzpsics and Astrononzy DePartnzent, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, Calzfornia 94132, andPhysics DePartment, University of California, Riverside, Califonzia 92521(Received 20 June 1983)Results are presented from a search for fractional charges in water from a variety ofnatural sources. About 30000 water drops have been measured, comprising 51 pg ofwater and dissolved materials. No evidence for fractional charge was seen.PACS numbers: 14.80.DqRecent reports' of third-integral charges on su-perconducting niobium spheres levitated in a mag-netic field have heightened interest in the searchfor quarks in stable matter. Other magnetic-levitometer experiments using steel samples"have given negative results. These experimentsall suffer from the need to use samples of refinedor processed materials. Since quarked atomswould appear as impurities in these samples,processing may have depleted the samples ofquarked matter. Other experiments have searchedsmaller samples, but claim greater sensitivitydue to enrichment schemes based on specific as-sumptions about the chemistry of quarked mat-ter. Some of these assumptions are rather un-certain, as the quark mass, the sign of its charge,and the nature of the long-range color force, ifany, might affect the chemical behavior of quarkedatoms dramatically. ' One simple property ofquarked atoms which is rather generally agreedon is that they would not evaporate easily fromsolution in a polar liquid. This could lead to con-centration of quarks in the ocean.In the experiment reported here we measurednatural samples ocean water, water from land-locked salt lakes, natural mineral waters, andothers —in unrefined form, although to relievesaturation, some distilled water was occasional-ly added. Some of these samples have probablybenefited from concentration of quarks by evap-oration. In a 51-p.g sample, we find no evidencefor fractional charge.The San Francisco State quark-search appara-tus is a modification of the Millikan oil-drop ex-periment in which small drops are introducedone at a time into a measuring chamber by apiezoelectric drop ejector. The drop's drift ve-locity in an electric field is measured by timingthe passage of an image of the illuminated dropover a series of slits. The measurement is con-trolled and data are collected by an on-line com-puter. By switching the field polarity in mid-measurement, the mass and charge of each dropis determined. The measurement is highly re-dundant, allowing reliable rejection of badlymeasured drops. Drops which change chargeduring the measurement are identified and reject-ed. Drops can be measured at a rate of about 1sec ', and we can measure about 1 pg of waterin an hour of good running. The charge on a 15-pm-diam water drop is measured to an accuracyof about 3.5' of e.To keep the charge on drops to be measurednear zero, a bias wire is inserted into the waterin the drop ejector. The potential of this wire (afew volts) is adjusted by the computer. We ac-cepted drops with charge between —12' and + 12e.Rejection of charges outside this range accountsfor most of the roughly 50% rejection rate of sin-gle measurements. Further details of the appa-ratus and a full discussion of criteria for rejec-tion of data have been published previously. 'Figure 1 shows the measured velocity of a dropas a function of position. Each value of the veloc-ity is determined from the crossing times for twoadjacent slits. The field switches from positiveto negative at slit 39. The change in velocityseen at this point corresponds to a charge on thedrop of —Se. The field returns to its original po-larity at slit 74, and the velocity returns to near-ly its original value. A change in charge duringthe measurement can be detected by comparingthe final velocity with the original one. This iscomplicated, however, in that we cannot com-1983 The American Physical Society 731VOLUME 51, NUMBER 9 PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 29 AUcUsT 19838.0—E7.0O00)6.0CigPQ y ~~ ~g p Is%g~8 ~ ~ q,—-a++ r ~~ Ig glPy~ ~10410Oo 105.0—0I I I I40Pos i t ion (s I i t number)I80F 10FIG. 1. Drift velocity as a function of position for atypical water drop. Reversals of the electric fieldoccur at slits 39 and 74.pletely eliminate evaporation of the water drops.The steady mass loss due to evaporation givesrise to a general decrease in drift velocity overthe time of the measurement, which can also beseen in Fig. 1. During a run, the drop size andthe rate of evaporation are sufficiently constantthat an on-line correction can be applied, and a"charge change" AQ calculated for each drop.Only drops with b Q & 0.5e are kept in the datasample. The rate of occurrence of values outsidethis limit is small, less than one per thousanddrops measured.In Fig. 2 we show the results from all of ourwater samples. The hoizontal axis is residualcharge, the nonintegral part of the measuredcharge value. A drop containing a quark wouldI I0.5Residual charge (units of e)FIG. 2. Distribution of residual charge for all ofour water drops. The curve is a fitted Gaussian witha standard deviation 0.037e.appear near 3e or 3e, indicated by arrows. AGaussian curve fitted to the data (o =0.037e), cen-tered at zero residual charge, is drawn on theplot. Most of the measurements roughly followthis single Gaussian. Two measurements withresidual charge of about 0.74e seem quite incon-sistent with the distribution for integer charges.However, they are not very close to the chargeof a quark; with a measuring error of 0.042e,typical of runs at the time these data were taken,they fall about 1.75@ from &e. We feel that thesetwo measurements are due to disturbances in thechamber caused by the electric field. IrregularTABLE I. Sources of water samples giving the mass of each type measured and the amount of the major dis-solved materials.Water source DescriptionMass measured(vg)Major solutes(pg)Pacific OceanLake LouiseCalistoga waterPerrier waterBumpass' HellMono LakeDistilled waterOff Ocean Beach, San FranciscoGlacial Lake, CanadaBottled from the Geysers, Ca.liforniaFrom the Perrier Source, FranceFumarole, Lassen Volcanic National ParkLand-locked saline lake, California13.415.57.32.34.10.87.5Na(0. 17), Cl(0.29), Mg(0. 016)SO4(0.014}, Ca(0.008)"SO4(0.001), SiO~(0. 001)Na(0. 03), Cl(0.02), CO3(0.02),SO4(0.01) 5 K(0.001)'See Ref. 7.Patrick Muffler, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Cal. , private communication.'B. F. Jones, U.S. Geological Survey Prof. Paper 502-A, 1965 (unpublished). Figures from these listings havebeen increased by 50;&, since diversion of the tributaries to Mono Lake by the Los Angeles water department hasincreased the lake's salinity since 1965 by about 5(Pp.732VOLUME 51, NUMBER 9 PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 29 AUcUsT 1983TABLE II. Comparisons of the type and quantity of material analyzed by recent quark searches. Only the exper-iment of LaRue, Phillips, and Fsirbsnk has evidence for qusrks. The stated values in the quark/nucleon columnfor the other null experiments are upper limits.Reference Technique Sample material Mass Quark/NucleonLaRue, Phillips, and Fairbank (Ref. 1)Marinelli and Morpurgo (Ref. 2)Liebowitz, Binder, and Ziock (Ref. 3).Hodges et al. (Ref. 6)Ogorodnikov, Samoilov, and Solntsev (Ref. 10)Boyd et al. (Ref. 11)This experimentLevitometerLevitometerLevitometerMillikanDesorptionVan de GraaffMillikanNiobiumSteelSteelNative mercur ySea water andocean sedimentsHeliumNatural waters1100pg3700 IL(g720 pg175 pgkg a20 pg51 pg2.1x 10 20&1.3x10 2'&6.9x10 ~'& 2.8x 10& 4.0x10& 6.4x 10& 9.8x 10"The experiment of Ogordnikov, Samoilov, and Solntsev is the only experiment listed here which relies on aquark concentration scheme. The scheme involves two assumptions: (a) that the vapor from the heated samplewill contain the quarks; and (2) that quarks collected on filter electrodes can he transported to collector electrodes.With an applied electric field, the rate of desorption from the heated collector electrode then sets the limit onquark concentrations.air currents due to discharges in the chamberare sometimes observed. We have also occasion-ally observed tiny charged bits of matter flyingup or down in the chamber which sometimes af-fect the motion of the drop being measured. Onesource of these charged particles is the waterdrops themselves, which can evaporate to leavea small salt crystal behind.The origins of our water samples and some de-tails about them are given in Table I. These sam-ples have complicated and varied geologic his-tories. The spring waters and the fumarole run-off have passed through subterranean rock forma-tions, two of them at high temperatures. MonoLake is the oldest free-standing body of water inNorth America (over one million years old}. Theoceans have collected solutes over the last threebillion years. Our samples contain a wide rangeof dissolved ions; in addition to those listed, theycontain trace quantities (& 10' atoms) of morethan forty elements, including Ge, In, Mo, V,T, U, W, and Nb. 'The special role of sea water in quark searchesis due to the fact that a single quark will alwayshave an electric monopole moment. The high sol-ubility of polar solutes in water is well known,and is due to hydration (hydrogen-bonding} inter-actions between solute and water. ' Thus, quarksof any sign should remain dissolved in water.Perhaps only the unfortunate binding of a quarkto its antiquark would allow their removal fromwater (by precipitation or annihilation).The observation by Millikan in 1910 of "a valueof the charge on the drop some 3(P(- lower thanthe final value of e" was a measurement made onwater drops condensed from vapor. ' His samplein total was about 0.0007 pg, some 100000 timessmaller than ours. Millikan's explanation wasthat the measurement of that drop was in erroras a result of rapid evaporation. Thus the inter-pretation of this uncertain measurement as evi-dence for fractional charge should be discounted.A comparison between our result and the otherpublished stable-matter quark searches of thelast four years is shown in Table II. The onlypositive quark search is the experiment of LaRue,Phillips, and Fairbank' which has observed four-teen charges of + 3e. Compared to their totalsample, the water analyzed in our experiment is20 times less in mass. For the null experimentsthe quark, ./nucleon column gives the upper limiton the concentration of quarks. The limits arecalculated at the 95/&, confidence level except forthe analysis of Boyd et al. which is at 67%%u& and ofOgorodnikov, Samoilov, and Solntsev where theconfidence level is not available.In conclusion, we have measured the largestdirect water sample ever, and the only one sinceMillikan's work, with no evidence for quarks.We find less than one quark per 1.0X 10"nucleonsof natural water with 95/~ confidence.We would like to acknowledge the help of Kim-berly Coburn and Frederick Walters in the earlyportions of this work, and the support and en-couragement of Dean James Kelley and ProfessorJohn Burke and Professor Gerald Fisher. Thiswork was supported by the U. S. Department ofEnergy under Contract No. DE-AC03-81ER40009733VOLUME 51, NUMBER 9 P H Y SIC A L RE VI E%' LETTERS 29 AUcUsT 1983and early stages of the experiment were support-ed by the Research Corporation.~'~Present address: Laboratoire de Physique Nucle-aire des Hautes Energies, Ecole Polytechnique, F-01128 Palaiseau, France.'G. LaRue, J. D. Phillips, and W. M. Fairbank, Phys.Rev. Lett. 46, 967 (1981).'-M. Marinelli and G. Morpurgo, Phys. Rep. 85, 162(1982), and references cited therein.~D. Llebowitz, M. Binder, and K. O. H. Ziock, Phys.Rev. Lett. 50, 1640 (1983).4See the review by L. W. Jones, Rev. Mod. Phys. 49,717 (1977).5The properties of atoms with quarked nuclei havebeen discussed by K. S. Lackner and G. Zweig, Lett.Nuovo Cimento 33, 65 (1982)."C. L. Hodges, P. Abrams, A. R. Baden, R. W. Bland,D. C. Joyce, J. P. Royer, F. Wm. Walters, E. G. Wil-son, P. G. Y. Wong, and K. C. Young, Phys. Rev. Lett.47, 1651 (1981); P. C. Abrams, K. C. Coburn, D. C.Joyce, M. L. Savage, F. Wm. Walters, B. A. Young,R. W. Bland, R. T. Johnson, and C. L. Hodges, inNovel R'esults in Particle Physics, edited by R. S. Pan-vini et gl. , A1P Conference Proceedings No. 93 (Ameri-can Institute of Physics, New York, 1982), p. 15.'P. K. Park, in tVater and Aqueous Solutions, editedby R. A. Horne (Wiley, New York, 1971), pp. 245-248.F. Frank, in lVater: A Co~nprehensive Treatise(Plenum, New York, 1973), pp. 19 and 43.'R. A. Millikan, Philos. Mag. 19, 220, 223 (1910).D. D. Ogorodnikov, I. M. Samoilov, and A. M. Soln-tsev, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 76, 1881 (1979) [Sov. Phys.JETP 49, 953 (1979)].' R. N. Boyd, S. L. Blatt, T. R. Donoghue, L. J. Dries,H. J. Hausman, and H. R. Suiter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 43,1288 (1979).734

Search for Fractional Charges in Water

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Search for Fractional Charges in Water

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