English

Double-sphere enhanced optomechanical spectroscopy constrains symmetron dark energy

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-03-06 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

Screened scalar fields such as the symmetron provide a viable description of dark energy yet their laboratory detection remains challenging. We propose an optomechanical scheme to constrain symmetron interactions using two optically levitated nanospheres inside a cavity. The symmetron-mediated interaction induces an effective coupling which leads to a measurable splitting in the optomechanical resonance spectrum. We forecast constraints in the regime μ102\mu \sim 10^{-2}eV-10410^{-4} eV, which shows that this approach can improve existing laboratory bounds by up to several orders of magnitude, demonstrating the sensitivity of optomechanical spectroscopy to screened fifth forces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.05090,
  title  = {Double-sphere enhanced optomechanical spectroscopy constrains symmetron dark energy},
  author = {Jiawei Li and Ka-Di Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.05090},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages, 7 figures