A Laboratory Search for Dark Energy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a laboratory experiment to detect dark energy by observing low-energy photon-photon interactions, aiming to identify an extremely light scalar field associated with the universe's accelerating expansion.

Contribution

It introduces a novel laboratory method to search for dark energy through photon-photon interactions, connecting scalar-tensor theories with experimental detection.

Findings

Proposes a feasible experimental setup for detecting light scalar fields

Links scalar-tensor theories to observable photon interactions

Suggests potential to identify dark energy in laboratory conditions

Abstract

The discovery of the accelerating universe indicates strongly the presence of a scalar field which is not only expected to solve today's version of the cosmological constant problem, or the fine-tuning and the coincidence problems, but also provides a way to understand dark energy. It has also been shown that Jordan's scalar-tensor theory is now going to be re-discovered in the new lights. In this letter we suggest a way to search for the extremely light scalar field by means of a laboratory experiment on the low-energy photon-photon interactions with the quasi-parallel incident beams.