Higgs production as a probe of Chameleon Dark Energy

TL;DR

This paper investigates how chameleon dark energy fields could influence particle physics processes, including Higgs production, and derives new bounds on their couplings, highlighting challenges for detection at colliders.

Contribution

It provides the first microphysical model linking chameleon dark energy to electromagnetic fields and analyzes their impact on Higgs production at colliders.

Findings

Derived a new bound on chameleon coupling strength.

Showed chameleons induce photon couplings in matter.

Found collider detection of chameleons is unlikely due to gauge invariance.

Abstract

In this paper we study various particle physics effects of a light, scalar dark energy field with chameleon-like couplings to matter. We show that a chameleon model with only matter couplings will induce a coupling to photons. In doing so, we derive the first microphysical realization of a chameleonic dark energy model coupled to the electromagnetic field strength. This analysis provides additional motivation for current and near-future tests of axion-like and chameleon particles. We find a new bound on the coupling strength of chameleons in uniformly coupled models. We also study the effect of chameleon fields on Higgs production, which is relevant for hadron colliders. These are expected to manufacture Higgs particles through weak boson fusion, or associated production with a Z or W. We show that, like the Tevatron, the LHC will not be able to rule out or observe chameleons through this mechanism, because gauge invariance of the low energy Lagrangian suppresses the corrections that may arise.