Related papers: Testing Chameleon Theories with Light Propagating …
The PVLAS collaboration has announced recently the observation dichroism and birefringence of vacuum permeated by a intense magnetic field. Both are typical predictions of the existence of light particles that, as the QCD axion, interact…
Possible extensions of the standard model of elementary particle physics suggest the existence of particles with small, unquantized electric charge. Photon initiated pair production of millicharged fermions in an external magnetic field…
We present the most recent results of both aspects of the GammeV experiment. The first aspect is a search for axion-like particles using a variable baseline, "light-shining-through-a-wall" technique. This search excludes the particle…
We review some of the properties of chameleon theories. Chameleon fields are gravitationally coupled to matter and evade gravitational tests thanks to two fundamental properties. The first one is the density dependence of the chameleon…
We report results from the GammeV Chameleon Afterglow Search---a search for chameleon particles created via photon/chameleon oscillations within a magnetic field. This experiment is sensitive to a wide class of chameleon power-law models…
Chameleon particles, which could explain dark energy, are in many ways similar to axions, suggesting that an axion helioscope can be used for chameleon detection. The distinguishing property of chameleon particles is that, unlike Standard…
The chameleon is a scalar field whose mass depends on the density of its environment. Chameleons are necessarily coupled to matter particles and will excite transitions between atomic energy levels in an analogous manner to photons. When…
Chameleon fields, which are scalar field dark energy candidates, can evade fifth force constraints by becoming massive in high-density regions. However, this property allows chameleon particles to be trapped inside a vacuum chamber with…
We point out that chameleon field theories might reveal themselves as an 'afterglow' effect in axion-like particle search experiments due to chameleon-photon conversion in a magnetic field. We estimate the parameter space which is…
We propose an afterglow phenomenon as a unique trace of chameleon fields in optical experiments. The vacuum interaction of a laser pulse with a magnetic field can lead to a production and subsequent trapping of chameleons in the vacuum…
The observation of a non-vanishing rotation of linear polarized laser light after passage through a strong magnetic field by the PVLAS collaboration has renewed the interest in light particles coupled to photons. Axions are a species of…
This paper describes the 25 year effort to measure vacuum magnetic birefringence and dichroism with the PVLAS experiment. The experiment went through two main phases: the first using a rotating superconducting magnet and the second using…
Chameleons are light scalar fields with remarkable properties. Through the interplay of self-interactions and coupling to matter, chameleon particles have a mass that depends on the ambient matter density. The manifestation of the fifth…
Recently the PVLAS collaboration reported the observation of a rotation of linearly polarized laser light induced by a transverse magnetic field - a signal being unexpected within standard QED. Two mechanisms have been proposed to explain…
A scalar field dark energy candidate could couple to ordinary matter and photons, enabling its detection in laboratory experiments. Here we study the quantum properties of the chameleon field, one such dark energy candidate, in an…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) are a common prediction of certain theories beyond the Standard Model and couple to photons in the presence of external magnetic fields. As a consequence, photon-ALP conversions could lead to an enhancement of…
We report the first results from the GammeV search for chameleon particles, which may be created via photon-photon interactions within a strong magnetic field. Chameleons are hypothesized scalar fields that could explain the dark energy…
Chameleons are scalar fields whose mass depends on the environment, specifically on the ambient matter density. While nearly massless in the cosmos, where the matter density is tiny, their mass is of order of an inverse millimeter on Earth,…
Oscillations between photons and axion-like particles (ALP) travelling in intergalactic magnetic fields have been invoked to explain a number of astrophysical phenomena, or used to constrain ALP properties using observations. One example is…
Scalar fields with a "chameleon" property, in which the effective particle mass is a function of its local environment, are common to many theories beyond the standard model and could be responsible for dark energy. If these fields couple…