Constraining symmetron dark energy using atom interferometry

Abstract

Symmetron field is one of the promising candidates of dark energy scalar fields. In all viable candidate field theories, a screening mechanism is implemented to be consistent with existing tests of general relativity. The screening effect in the symmetron theory manifests its influence only to the thin outer layer of a bulk object, where inside a dense material the symmetry of the field is restored and no force exists. For pointlike particles such as atoms, the depth of screening is larger than the size of the particle, such that the screening mechanism is ineffective and the symmetron force is fully expressed on the atomic test particles. Extra force measurements using atom interferometry are thus much more sensitive than bulk mass based measurements, and indeed have placed the most stringent constraints on the parameters characterizing symmetron field in certain region. There is however no clear direct connection between the laboratory measurements and astrophysical observations, where the constraints are far separated by 10 orders of magnitude in the parameter space. In this paper, we present a closed-form expression for the symmetron acceleration of realistic atomic experiments. The expression is validated through numerical simulations for a terrestrial fifth-force experiment using atom interferometry. As a result, we show the connection of the atomic measurement constraints to the astrophysical ones. We also estimate the attainable symmetron constraints from a previously proposed experiment in space intended for test of chameleon theory. The atomic constraints on the symmetron theory will be further improved by orders of magnitude.

10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Dynamics of dark energy
• Beyond the Cosmological Standard Model
• Tests of Chameleon Gravity
• Equivalence Principle Implications of Modified Gravity Models
• Experiment to detect dark energy forces using atom interferometry
• Probing Dark Energy with Atom Interferometry
• Tests of Gravity with Future Space-Based Experiments
• Constraining symmetron fields with atom interferometry
• Atomic Interferometry Test of Dark Energy
• Casimir, Gravitational and Neutron Tests of Dark Energy

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• The Nature of Dark Energy and Constraints on Its Hypothetical Constituents from Force Measurements
• Robust numerical computation of the 3D scalar potential field of the cubic Galileon gravity model at solar system scales
• Bose-Einstein condensates in microgravity and fundamental tests of gravity
• Quantum corrections to symmetron fifth-force profiles
• Quantum Physics in Space