Related papers: Atomic Precision Tests and Light Scalar Couplings
In a large class of scalar-tensor theories that are potential candidates for dark energy, a nonminimal coupling between the scalar and the photon is possible. The presence of such an interaction grants us the exciting prospect of directly…
Background: The recent disagreement between the proton charge radius extracted from Lamb shift measurements of muonic and electronic hydrogen invites speculation that new physics may be to blame. Several proposals have been made for new…
High precision spectroscopy can provide a sensitive tool to test Coulomb's law on atomic length scales. This can then be used to constrain particles such as extra "hidden" photons or minicharged particles that are predicted in many…
We compute bounds from atomic spectroscopy on chameleon fields that couple to the photon. Chameleons are a wide class of scalar field models that generically lead to screened fifth forces and a host of novel phenomenologies, particularly…
The light scalar field with a coupling to standard model particles provide a possible source of the dark matter, long-range Yukawa forces or violation of the weak equivalence principle, which can be potentially explored by precision gravity…
Many modifications of gravity introduce new scalar degrees of freedom, and in such theories matter fields typically couple to an effective metric that depends on both the true metric of spacetime and on the scalar field and its derivatives.…
We consider a broad class of interactions between radiation and a light scalar field, including both conformal and disformal couplings. Such a scalar field potentially acts on cosmological scales as dark energy and could also appear in…
Certain modified gravity theories predict the existence of an additional, non-conformally coupled scalar field. A disformal coupling of the field to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is shown to affect the evolution of the energy…
We show that, as a result of non-linear self-interactions, it is feasible, at least in light of the bounds coming from terrestrial tests of gravity, measurements of the Casimir force and those constraints imposed by the physics of compact…
The existence of cosmic fields made from yet unknown light bosons is predicted in many extensions to the Standard Model. They are especially of interest as possible constituents of dark matter. To detect such light and weakly interacting…
A pseudoscalar or scalar particle $\phi$ that couples to two photons but not to leptons, quarks and nucleons would have effects in most of the experiments searching for axions, since these are based on the $a \gamma \gamma $ coupling. We…
We consider the quantum field theory for a scalar model of the electromagnetic field interacting with a system of two-level atoms. In this setting, we show that it is possible to uniquely determine the density of atoms from measurements of…
Precision spectroscopy of light muonic atoms provides unique information about the atomic and nuclear structure of these systems and thus represents a way to access fundamental interactions, properties and constants. One application…
Technologies for manipulating single atoms have advanced drastically in the past decades. Due to their excellent controllability of internal states, atoms serve as one of the ideal platforms as quantum systems. One major research direction…
In light of the known Higgs mass and the current constraints on the quark-lepton Higgs coupling, we derive conditions for extracting upper limits on the lepton-nucleon Higgs coupling from light atoms and ions, assuming the availability of…
Reinforcement of the puzzle about the proton charge radius r, stimulated by the recent experiments with muonic hydrogen induced news discussions on the subject, and now some physicists are ready to adopt the exotic properties of muon, lying…
We compute bounds on screened scalar field theories from hydrogen-like systems. New light scalar fields generically have a direct coupling to matter. Such a coupling is strongly constrained by myriad experimental measurements. However,…
We report on the first results of a sensitive search for scalar coupling of photons to a light neutral boson in the mass range of approximately 1.0 milli-electron volts and coupling strength greater than 10$^-6$ GeV$^-1$ using optical…
We study cosmological models involving scalar fields coupled to radiation and discuss their effect on the redshift evolution of the cosmic microwave background temperature, focusing on links with varying fundamental constants and dynamical…
Light scalar fields can naturally couple disformally to matter fields. Static, non-relativistic sources do not generate a classical field profile for a disformally coupled scalar, and so such scalars are free from the constraints on the…