Cavity optomechanical spectroscopy constraints chameleon dark energy scenarios

Abstract

The chameleon scalar field is a matter-coupled dark energy candidate with the screening mechanisms. In the present paper,we propose a quantum cavity optomechanical scheme to detect the possible signature of chameleons via the optical pump-probe spectroscopy. Compare to the previous experiment the sensitivity can be improved by the using of electrostatic shield and a pump-probe scheme to read the weak frequency splitting. We expect that this work will be a useful addition to the current literature on proposals to detect effects of dark energy.

Probe chameleon dark energy with the coupling between a levitated nanodiamond and the single-spin

“…Considering the electrostatic shield, the resolution of the force gradient depends only on the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the absorption peak. Due to this new measurement mechanism and the reduced particle size, the result is more than three orders of magnitude more sensitive than the previous work proposed by our group using double optically levitated microspheres [18]. The constraint also reaches 10 2 -10 3 times stronger than the one from atom interferometry [16] at the pressure of 10 −11 mbar.…”

“…Thus the results are not able to probe chameleons below Λ = 2.4 meV. The scheme previously proposed by our group using double quantum coupled microspheres provides a stronger constraint [18].…”

“…And the levitated microsphere experiment[17] is denoted by the red line. The green dash line shows the theoretical limits in previous work based on double levitated cavity optomechanics[18]. The blue dash line shows the screening conditions for the nanodiamond.…”

“…Numbers of tabletop experiments proposed or implemented in high vacuum have made efforts to derive new limits on the chameleon parameters. They are torsion-balance experiments [7,8], gravity resonance spectroscopy [9,10], neutron interferometry [11,12], atom interferometry [13][14][15][16] and recently, the levitated microspheres [17,18]. Using a cesium matter-wave interferometer near a spherical mass in an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber, the previous experiment measured the chameleon fields between a macroscopic object and Cs atoms at the acceleration a < 5.5µm s −2 [13].…”

SELCIE: A tool for investigating the chameleon field of arbitrary sources

“…In future work we plan to use SELCIE with a genetic algorithm to find experimental configurations which optimise the possibility of detecting a chameleon fifth force. This optimisation algorithm could be used, for example, to extend the reach of current and future experiments that search for chameleon fifth forces with atom interferometry [33,34,41,55,56], ultra-cold neutrons [57][58][59][60][61][62], torsion balances [63][64][65], Casimir experiments [66][67][68][69][70] or opto-mechanical sensors [71][72][73][74].…”