The Chameleon A.C.Davis

with P.Brax, C van deBruck, C.Burrage, J. Khoury, A.Weltman,D.Mota, C.Shelpe, D. Seery and D.Shaw

PRD70(04)123518, PRL 99(07)121103; PRD76(07)085010; PRD76(07)124034; 0902.2320 +unpublished

Outline

• Introduction to chameleon theories • Chameleon cosmology • Photon Coupling and PVLAS • Predictions + Casimir Force • Electroweak physics --Implications for LHC • Possible detection in AGNs + polarised starlight • Conclusions

The Big Puzzle

Equ of state Consider scalar field

potential dominated for WMAP

Dark Energy?

Like during primordial inflation, scalar fields can trigger the late acceleration of the universe. An attractive possibility: runaway behaviour. The mass of the field now is of order of the Hubble rate. Almost massless .

Do Scalars Couple to Matter?

Effective field theories scalars with gravity and deviation from Newton’s law

The radion

The distance between branes in the Randall-Sundrum model: where Deviations from Newton’s law Far away branes small deviations close branes constant coupling constant

Experimental consequences?

Long lived scalar fields which couple with Yukawa interaction: This new force would have gravitational effects gravity etc..

The Chameleon Mechanism

When coupled to matter, scalar fields potential:

Typical example: Ratra-Peebles potential Constant coupling to matter

Chameleon field: field with a matter dependent mass A way to reconcile gravity tests and cosmology:  Nearly massless field on cosmological scales  Massive field in the atmosphere  Allow large gravitational coupling constant of order one or more  Possible non-trivial effects in the solar system (satellite experiments)

• Fifth force experiments

Gravity Tests

• Equivalence principle

The thin-shell property

• The chameleon force produced by a massive body is due only to a thin shell near the surface • Thin shell – deviations from Newton’s law • Thick shell – deviations from Newton’s law Khoury & Weltman (2004)

Chameleon Cosmology

 Attractor Solution  follows the minimum of the effective potential  In agreement with cosmological observations (Redshift of recombination, BBN) if:  Equation of state  early times  late times  The chameleon is a natural DE candidate!

Brax, van de Bruck, Davis, Khoury, Weltman (2004)

Scalar Optics

• The PVLAS experiment originally claimed to have observed a signal for the birefrigence (ellipticity) and the dichroism (rotation) of a polarised laser beam going through a static magnetic field.

• Effect claimed to be larger than induced by higher order terms in the QED Lagrangian (one loop) or gaseous effects (Cotton-Mouton effect) • The phenomenon can be interpreted as a result of the mixing between photons and scalars.

• More precisely: a coupling between 2 photons and a scalar can induce two effects: Rotation : a photon can be transformed in a scalar.

Ellipticity : a photon can be transformed into a scalar and then regenerated as a photon (delay)

PVLAS: Alas!

• New runs looking for experimental artifacts have contradicted the 2000-2005 experimental results.

• No rotation signal observed at 2.3 T and 5.5 T • No ellipticity signal at 2.3 T and a large positive signal at 5.5 T • Ellipticity incompatible with a traditional scalar/axion interpretation ( scaling).

PVLAS vs CAST

• Putative PVLAS experimental results could be seen as a result of the coupling: • Limits on mass of scalar quite stringent: • No contradiction with CAST experiments on scalar emitted from the sun • What if ? CHAMELEON ?

• Universality of coupling: • Large gravitational coupling: • No contradiction with gravity tests, variation of constants, cosmology, astrophysics bounds….

• No deviation from gravity in satellite experiments…. Small objects have a thin shell.

Chameleon Optics

• Chameleons never leave the cavity (outside mass too large, no tunnelling) • Chameleons do not reflect simultaneously with photons.

• Chameleons propagate slower in the no-field zone within the cavity

Predicted Rotation

Predicted Ellipticity

• • Because the chameleon is reflected rather than escaping and their reflection is decoherent with photons we expect ellipticity > rotation in chameleon theories. This is because, for a large number of passes in the chamber the ellipticity builds up but due to the decoherence the rotation doesn’t. At present we are in agreement with current experiments, but this could be tested soon!

• Can fit the new data with various values of n and M: • We know that these parameters lead to a full compatibility with gravity tests, cosmology, CAST….

• GammeV could see an `afterglow’

Casimir Force Experiments

• Measure force between – Two parallel plates • Difficult to keep plates parallel • R. S. Decca et al., PRD 75 (2007) – A plate and a sphere • Harder to calculate analytically.

S. K. Lamoreaux, PRL 78 (1997) • No physical shield is used.

– Electrostatic forces calibrated for by controlling electric potential between plates.

Chameleons & Casimir

• We consider two potentials: – – • We find that currently:

What the future holds

New experiments

• Two new experiments currently under construction have real prospect of detecting chameleons.

• Los Alamos experiment –Sphere and plate –Could detect chameleon force if without a detailed knowledge of the thermal force.

S. K. Lamoreaux

Chameleons??

• Next generation of Casimir force measurement experiments have the precision to detect almost all chameleon dark energy models with • Generally a good model for the thermal Casimir force is required although some models can be detected without it.

Coupling to Electro-Weak Sector

o Unfortunately it turns out that o In principle same type of dependence for any scalar field: o Large corrections O(1)??

Daisies

Vacuum Polarisation

Bridges Oblique Corrections

Effective Action and Couplings

The coupling involves two unknown coupling functions (gauge invariance): At one loop the relevant vertices are:

Self-Energy Corrections I

The corrected propagator becomes: Measurements at low energy and the Z and W poles imply ten independent quantities. Three have to be fixed experimentally. One is not detectable hence six electroweak parameters: STUVWX

Self-Energy Corrections II

The self energy can be easily calculated: The self energy parameters all involve quadratic divergences For instance: The quadratic divergences cancel in the precision tests:

Dark Energy Screening

Vacuum Polarisation sensitive to the UV region of phase space where the difference between the W and Z masses is negligible Gauge invariance implies the existence of only two coupling functions with no difference between the W and Z bosons in the massless limit (compared to the UV region) No difference between the different particle vacuum polarisations, hence no effects on the precision tests.

mass

Experimental Constraints

Stronger bound from optics! M greater than 1 million GeV!

Inverse Coupling

Rainbows, Daisies and Bridges

Higher order corrections all suppressed

ALPs and Dark Energy

 Consider scalars and pseudoscalars coupling to photons through the terms  Such particles have been proposed as Dark Energy candidates:  Coupled Quintessence  Chameleon Dark Energy (Amendola 1999) (Khoury, Weltman 2004, Brax, Davis, van de Bruck 2007 )  Axionic Dark Energy (Carroll 1998, Kim, Nilles 2003)  ...

ALPs and Dark Energy

 We consider fields with  Pseudoscalars: limits from observations of neutrino burst from SN 1987A 1987)  Scalars: limits from fifth force (Ellis, Olive experiments  Chameleons: limits from the structure of starlight polarisation

Photon-ALP Mixing

 Mixing when photons propagate through background magnetic fields  Probability of mixing  Mixing with only one photon polarisation state  Also induces polarisation  Strong Mixing limit: (Raffelt, Stodolsky 1987)

Astrophysical Photon-ALP Mixing

 Magnetic fields known to exist in galaxies/galaxy clusters  These magnetic fields made up of a large number of magnetic domains  field in each domain of equal strength but randomly oriented  ALP mixing changes astrophysical observations  Non-conservation of photon number alters luminosity  Creation of polarisation

Strong Mixing in Galaxy Clusters

 Galaxy cluster:  Magnetic field strength  Magnetic coherence length  Electron density  Plasma frequency  Typical no. domains traversed  Strong mixing if  Requires

Effects of Strong Mixing on Luminosity

 After passing through many domains power is, on average, split equally between ALP and two polarisations of the photon 

Average

luminosity suppression = 2/3 (Csáki, Kaloper, Terning 2001)  Difficult to use this to constrain mixing because knowledge of initial luminosities is poor  Single source:  If paths ; averaged over many

Active Galactic Nuclei

 Strong correlation between 2 keV X-ray luminosity and optical luminosity (~5eV)  Use observations of 77 AGN from COMBO-17 and ROSAT surveys (z=0.061-2.54) (Steffen et al. 2006)  Likelihood ratio  r  14 Assuming initial polarisation  r>11 Allowing all polarisations  Is this really a preference for ALPsm? Or just an indication of more structure in the scatter?

Fingerprints

 10 5 bootstrap resamplings (with replacement) of the data - all samples 77 data points  Compute the central moments of the data    … is the standard deviation is the skewness of the data  Compare this with simulations of the best fit Gaussian and ALPsm models

Fingerprints

Conclusions I

• Chameleons automatically explain the observed acceleration of the universe.

• The could be detected by PVLAS experiments, evade the CAST bound and predict ellipticity>rotation.

• Casimir force experiments can test for chameleons. • The next generation of experiments could detect them or rule them out as dark energy candidates.

Conclusions II

• Their coupling to matter is screened in precision tests of the electroweak physics due to UV sensitivity or vacuum polarisation and gauge invariance.

• Scatter in astrophysical luminosity relations can be used to study the mixing with photons in magnetic fields. Applied to AGN this shows strong evidence for chameleons/ALP strong mixing over Gaussian scatter.