http://arxiv.org/abs/1809.10166
We initiate a quantum treatment of chameleon-like particles, deriving classical and quantum forces directly from the path integral. It is found that the quantum force can potentially dominate the classical one by many orders of magnitude. We calculate the quantum chameleon pressure between infinite plates, which is found to interpolate between the Casimir and the integrated Casimir-Polder pressures, respectively in the limits of full screening and no screening. To this end we calculate the chameleon propagator in the presence of an arbitrary number of one-dimensional layers of material. These results are applied to the symmetron dark energy model which turns out to be strongly constrained by quantum forces probed by molecular spectroscopy and the E\”otwash experiment. For the E\”otwash experiment we exactly take into account the effects of the intermediate shielding sheet by computing the symmetron propagator in five layers and find that the presence of the sheet enhances the quantum force by two orders of magnitude. As a result the E\”otwash experiment becomes sensitive to the quantum Casimir pressure from chameleon-like particles, constraining a large part of the symmetron parameter space.
P. Brax and S. Fichet
Tue, 9 Oct 18
52/77
Comments: 5 pages, 3 figures