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The shape dependence of chameleon screening

Burrage, Clare; Copeland, Edmund J.; Moss, Adam; Stevenson, James A.

Authors

ADAM MOSS ADAM.MOSS@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Associate Professor

James A. Stevenson



Abstract

Chameleon scalar fields can screen their associated fifth forces from detection by changing their mass with the local density. These models are an archetypal example of a screening mechanism, and have become an important target for both cosmological surveys and terrestrial experiments. In particular there has been much recent interest in searching for chameleon fifth forces in the laboratory. It is known that the chameleon force is less screened around non-spherical sources, but only the field profiles around a few simple shapes are known analytically. In this work we introduce a numerical code that solves for the chameleon field around arbitrary shapes with azimuthal symmetry placed in a spherical vacuum chamber. We find that deviations from spherical symmetry can increase the chameleon acceleration experienced by a test particle, and that the least screened objects are those which minimize some internal dimension. For the shapes considered in this work, keeping the mass, density and background environment fixed, the accelerations due to the source varied by a factor of ~ 3.

Citation

Burrage, C., Copeland, E. J., Moss, A., & Stevenson, J. A. (2018). The shape dependence of chameleon screening. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018(1), https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2018/01/056

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 16, 2018
Publication Date Jan 31, 2018
Deposit Date Feb 28, 2018
Journal Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Electronic ISSN 1475-7516
Publisher IOP Publishing
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 2018
Issue 1
DOI https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2018/01/056
Keywords dark energy experiments, dark energy theory, modified gravity
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/907601
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2018/01/056
Contract Date Feb 28, 2018