Astro- and Quantum Physical Tests of Screened Scalar Fields
arXiv:1910.05738
Abstract
In general, modified gravity theories are modifications or extensions of Einstein's general relativity. Some of them give rise to additional scalar degrees of freedom in Nature. If these scalar fields exist and are light enough, they should cause a gravity-like fifth force that could, in principle, exceed gravity in its strength. However, there are tight constraints on fifth forces from Solar System-based tests. Screening mechanisms are popular means for avoiding these constraints by suppressing a fifth force in regions of high environmental mass density but allowing for phenomenologically interesting effects in environments of lower densities. In this thesis, scalar field models with screening mechanisms will be discussed and some astro- and quantum physical tests for their existence presented. At first, the impact of disformally coupled symmetrons on gravitational lensing by galaxies will be evaluated. Secondly, it will be shown how fluctuations of a chameleon scalar field induce the open dynamics of a quantum test particle. For this, tools from non-equilibrium quantum field theory will be introduced, developed and applied, and a quantum master equation derived.
arXiv commentPhD thesis; 140 pages
References in corpus (47)
- Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
- Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
- Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
- Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
- Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
- GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
- Particle Dark Matter: Evidence, Candidates and Constraints
- f(R) Theories Of Gravity
- Chameleon Fields: Awaiting Surprises for Tests of Gravity in Space
- Chameleon Cosmology
- Atom Interferometers
- The String Dilaton and a Least Coupling Principle
- Implications of the Neutron Star Merger GW170817 for Cosmological Scalar-Tensor Theories
- Symmetron Fields: Screening Long-Range Forces Through Local Symmetry Restoration
- The Relation between Physical and Gravitational Geometry
- Testing General Relativity in Cosmology
- Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes
- Environmental Dependence of Masses and Coupling Constants
- A Minimal Spontaneously Broken Hidden Sector and its Impact on Higgs Boson Physics at the Large Hadron Collider
- Higgs-field Portal into Hidden Sectors
- Distance measures in cosmology
- The (pseudo)issue of the conformal frame revisited
- The Dilaton and Modified Gravity
- Effective Field Theory Approach to Gravitationally Induced Decoherence
- Decoherence during Inflation: the generation of classical inhomogeneities
- Dark Energy Condensation
- Coarse graining and decoherence in quantum field theory
- Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing
- The Lense--Thirring Effect and Mach's Principle
- An effective field theory during inflation: reduced density matrix and its quantum master equation
- An Alternative to Particle Dark Matter
- Constraining Disformally Coupled Scalar Fields
- Decoherence, discord and the quantum master equation for cosmological perturbations
- Revisiting fifth forces in the Galileon model
- Disformal transformation of cosmological perturbations
- A question mark on the equivalence of Einstein and Jordan frames
- Causal Dynamical Triangulations and the Quest for Quantum Gravity
- Fifth forces, Higgs portals and broken scale invariance
- Stellar kinematics from the symmetron fifth force in the Milky Way disk
- Imprint of entanglement entropy in the power spectrum of inflationary fluctuations
- Influence functional approach to decoherence during Inflation
- Novel Probes of Gravity and Dark Energy
- Fermionic influence (action) on inflationary fluctuations
- Quantum simulation of dark energy candidates
- Quantum-enhanced screened dark energy detection
- Not so non-renormalizable gravity
- Quantum Fields as Operator Valued Distributions and Causality