EFFICIENT BULK SEARCH FOR FRACTIONAL CHARGE WITH MULTIPLEXED MILLIKANCHAMBERS

We outline the design of a fully automated Millikan droplet apparatus that could detect a single free fractional charge in several hundred g rams of matter even without the use of a prefilter. This would constit ute an improvement over current limits by about three orders of magnit ude. The experiment achieves high material throughput and high backgro und rejection through on-line processing which allows for a feedback s ystem that can concentrate the measurement effort on anomalous droplet s. The task is simplified by generating a monodisperse stream of dropl ets which will be preprocessed to let only a very narrow range of char ges enter the Millikan chamber. Because the droplets can act as carrie rs of finely dispersed materials it is also possible to search for fra ctional charge in matter that has not undergone extensive refinement t hat may have excluded fractionally charged atoms from the sample. In a large refinery style operation many such Millikan chambers could run concurrently to achieve extremely large material throughput.