Alpenglow: A signature for chameleons in axionlike particle search experiments

Ahlers, M.; Lindner, A.; Ringwald, Andreas; Schrempp, Lily; Weniger, Christoph

doi:10.1103/physrevd.77.015018

Cited by 59 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This requires M 10 10 GeV to ensure the effect of the mixing is achromatic for optical photons. A chameleon model with a coupling of this strength should be detectable in future experiments looking for chameleonic afterglow [31,32] or Casimir forces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supernova brightening from chameleon-photon mixing

Burrage

2008

Phys. Rev. D

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Measurements of standard candles and measurements of standard rulers give an inconsistent picture of the history of the universe. This discrepancy can be explained if photon number is not conserved as computations of the luminosity distance must be modified. I show that photon number is not conserved when photons mix with chameleons in the presence of a magnetic field. The strong magnetic fields in a supernova mean that the probability of a photon converting into a chameleon in the interior of the supernova is high, this results in a large flux of chameleons at the surface of the supernova. Chameleons and photons also mix as a result of the intergalactic magnetic field. These two effects combined cause the image of the supernova to be brightened resulting in a model which fits both observations of standard candles and observations of standard rulers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supernova brightening from chameleon-photon mixing

Burrage

2008

Phys. Rev. D

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“…The theoretical and observational implications of a coupling between a light quintessence field or cosmon and other matter species have been widely explored in the literature [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. However, both cosmological tests and laboratory measurements challenge many of these scenarios and lead to strong bounds on the allowed strength of the coupling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mass freezing in growing neutrino quintessence

2011

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Growing neutrino quintessence solves the coincidence problem for dark energy by a growing cosmological value of the neutrino mass which emerges from a cosmon-neutrino interaction stronger than gravity. The cosmon-mediated attraction between neutrinos induces the formation of large scale neutrino lumps in a recent cosmological epoch. We argue that the non-linearities in the cosmon field equations stop the further increase of the neutrino mass within sufficiently dense and large lumps. As a result, we find the neutrino induced gravitational potential to be substantially reduced when compared to linear extrapolations. We furthermore demonstrate that inside a lump the possible time variation of fundamental constants is much smaller than their cosmological evolution. This feature may reconcile current geophysical bounds with claimed cosmological variations of the fine structure constant.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures. Version published in PR

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“…Our method directly tests the chameleon-matter interaction and does not rely on the existence of a chameleon-photoninteraction as other experiments do [25].…”

Section: Prl 112 151105 (2014) P H Y S I C a L R E V I E W L E T T Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Neutrons Knock at the Cosmic Door

Schleich¹,

Rasel²

2014

Physics

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We report on precision resonance spectroscopy measurements of quantum states of ultracold neutrons confined above the surface of a horizontal mirror by the gravity potential of Earth. Resonant transitions between several of the lowest quantum states are observed for the first time. These measurements demonstrate that Newton's inverse square law of gravity is understood at micron distances on an energy scale of 10 −14 eV. At this level of precision, we are able to provide constraints on any possible gravitylike interaction. In particular, a dark energy chameleon field is excluded for values of the coupling constant β > 5.8 × 10 8 at 95% confidence level (C.L.), and an attractive (repulsive) dark matter axionlike spin-mass coupling is excluded for the coupling strength g s g p > 3.7 × 10 −16 (5.3 × 10 −16 ) at a Yukawa length of λ ¼ 20 μm (95% C.L.). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.151105 PACS numbers: 04.80.Cc, 14.80.Va, 29.30.Hs, 95.36.+x Experiments that rely on frequency measurements can be performed with incredibly high precision. One example is Rabi spectroscopy, a resonance spectroscopy technique to measure the energy eigenstates of quantum systems. It was originally developed by Rabi to measure the magnetic moment of molecules [1]. Today, resonance spectroscopy techniques are applied in various fields of science and medicine including nuclear magnetic resonance, masers, and atomic clocks. These methods have opened up the field of low-energy particle physics with studies of particle properties and their fundamental interactions and symmetries. In an attempt to investigate gravity at short distances, we applied the concept of resonance spectroscopy to quantum states of very slow neutrons in Earth's gravity potential [2]. Here, we present the first precision measurements of gravitational quantum states with this method that we refer to as gravity resonance spectroscopy (GRS). The strength of GRS is that it does not rely on electromagnetic interactions. The use of neutrons as test particles bypasses the electromagnetic background induced by van der Waals and Casimir forces and other polarizability effects.Within this work, we link these new measurements to dark matter and dark energy searches. Observational cosmology has determined the dark matter and dark energy density parameters to an accuracy of 2 significant figures [3]. While dark energy explains the accelerated expansion of the universe, dark matter is needed in order to describe the rotation curves of galaxies and the large-scale structure of the universe. The true nature of dark energy and the content of dark matter remain a mystery, however. The two most obvious candidates for dark energy are either Einstein's cosmological constant [4] or quintessence theories [5,6], where the dynamic vacuum energy changes over time. The resonant frequencies of our quantum states are intimately related to these models. If some as yet undiscovered dark matter or dark energy particles interact with neutrons, this should result in a measurable energy shift of the obser...

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Alpenglow: A signature for chameleons in axionlike particle search experiments

Cited by 59 publications

References 25 publications

Supernova brightening from chameleon-photon mixing

Supernova brightening from chameleon-photon mixing

Mass freezing in growing neutrino quintessence

Neutrons Knock at the Cosmic Door

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