One-electron atoms in screened modified gravity

Abstract

In a large class of scalar-tensor theories that are potential candidates for dark energy, a nonminimal coupling between the scalar and the photon is possible. The presence of such an interaction grants us the exciting prospect of directly observing dark sector phenomenology in the electromagnetic spectrum. This paper investigates the behavior of one-electron atoms in this class of modified gravity models, exploring their viability as probes of deviations from general relativity in both laboratory and astrophysical settings. Building heavily on earlier studies, our main contribution is threefold: A thorough analysis finds additional fine-structure corrections previously unaccounted for, which now predict a contribution to the Lamb shift that is larger by nearly 4 orders of magnitude. In addition, they also predict a scalar-mediated photon-photon interaction, which now constrains the scalar's coupling to the photon independently of the matter coupling. This was not previously possible with atomic precision tests. Our updated constraints are ${\log }_{10}{\beta }_m\lesssim 13.4$ and ${\log }_{10}{\beta }_{\gamma }\lesssim 19.0$ for the matter and photon coupling, respectively, although these remain uncompetitive with bounds from other experiments. Second, we include the effects of the nuclear magnetic moment, allowing for the study of hyperfine structure and the 21 cm line, which hitherto have been unexplored in this context. Finally, we also examine how a background scalar leads to equivalence principle violations.

Minor updates to match PRD version

References in corpus (23)

• The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
• SPARC: Mass Models for 175 Disk Galaxies with Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves
• Particle Physics Implications of a Recent Test of the Gravitational Inverse Square Law
• Environmental Dependence of Masses and Coupling Constants
• Late-time cosmology with 21cm intensity mapping experiments
• The Proton Radius Puzzle
• The (pseudo)issue of the conformal frame revisited
• Compatibility of the chameleon-field model with fifth-force experiments, cosmology, and PVLAS and CAST results
• Probing Dark Energy with Atom Interferometry
• A Compendium of Chameleon Constraints
• Hydrogen atom in Palatini theories of gravity
• Detecting Chameleons: The Astronomical Polarization Produced by Chameleon-like Scalar Fields
• Testing Chameleon Theories with Light Propagating through a Magnetic Field
• Atomic Precision Tests and Light Scalar Couplings
• Laboratory constraints on chameleon dark energy and power-law fields
• The Effect of a Chameleon Scalar Field on the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Alpenglow - A Signature for Chameleons in Axion-Like Particle Search Experiments
• Supernova Brightening from Chameleon-Photon Mixing
• Anomalous coupling of scalars to gauge fields
• Probing the Gravitational Dependence of the Fine-Structure Constant from Observations of White Dwarf Stars
• Detecting solar chameleons through radiation pressure
• Hydrogen atom wave function and eigen energy in the Rindler space
• The Proton Radius Problem and Point-Particle Effective Field Theory

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Constraining screened fifth forces with the electron magnetic moment
• Atom-field dynamics in curved spacetime