Chameleon dark energy and atom interferometry
Chameleon dark energy and atom interferometry
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DOI：
10.1103/physrevd.94.044051
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发表时间：
2016-08-25
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Hamilton, Paul
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Elder, Benjamin;Khoury, Justin;Hamilton, Paul
原子干涉测量实验正在以不断提高的精度寻找变色龙标量场的证据。随着实验变得更加精确，理论预测也必须变得更加精确。之前的工作已经做了很多近似来简化计算，这通常需要求解三维非线性偏微分方程。本文使用均匀网格上的数值松弛方案计算变色力。这项技术比以前的工作更通用，以前的工作假设球对称性将偏微分方程简化为一维常微分方程。我们检查了之前在该主题上所做的近似的影响，并在密切模仿汉密尔顿等人最近的实验的设置中计算变色龙力。具体来说，我们将真空室模拟为尺寸与实验相匹配的圆柱体，同时考虑到源质量的反反应、其与中心的偏移以及室壁的影响。值得注意的是，测试原子粒子的加速度与近似分析处理仅相差 20%。这些结果使我们能够对变色龙场论的参数空间施加严格的约束，尽管最终我们发现的约束与我们在 Hamilton 等人中报告的约束相同。因为我们稍微低估了真空室的大小。随着实验变得更加精确，这种计算技术将继续发挥作用，并且也将成为优化未来变色龙领域和相关理论搜索的宝贵工具。
Atom interferometry experiments are searching for evidence of chameleon scalar fields with ever-increasing precision. As experiments become more precise, so too must theoretical predictions. Previous work has made numerous approximations to simplify the calculation, which in general requires solving a three-dimensional nonlinear partial differential equation. This paper calculates the chameleonic force using a numerical relaxation scheme on a uniform grid. This technique is more general than previous work, which assumed spherical symmetry to reduce the partial differential equation to a one-dimensional ordinary differential equation. We examine the effects of approximations made in previous efforts on this subject and calculate the chameleonic force in a setup that closely mimics the recent experiment of Hamilton et al. Specifically, we simulate the vacuum chamber as a cylinder with dimensions matching those of the experiment, taking into account the backreaction of the source mass, its offset from the center, and the effects of the chamber walls. Remarkably, the acceleration on a test atomic particle is found to differ by only 20% from the approximate analytical treatment. These results allow us to place rigorous constraints on the parameter space of chameleon field theories, although ultimately the constraint we find is the same as the one we reported in Hamilton et al. because we had slightly underestimated the size of the vacuum chamber. This computational technique will continue to be useful as experiments become even more precise and will also be a valuable tool in optimizing future searches for chameleon fields and related theories.