Shining Light on Dark Energy and Modifications of Gravity

TL;DR

This paper discusses how laboratory axion searches can effectively detect and constrain disformal scalar fields arising in theories of dark energy and modified gravity, providing a novel approach to testing these models.

Contribution

It reveals that existing axion search experiments are highly suitable for probing disformal scalar fields, offering new constraints on dark energy and modified gravity theories.

Findings

Laboratory axion searches can constrain disformal scalar fields.

Disformal couplings are relevant in dark energy and modified gravity models.

Axion experiments provide a new avenue for testing fundamental physics.

Abstract

Many theories of dark energy and modified gravity give rise to scalar fields that couple derivatively to the energy momentum tensor of matter. This is known as disformal coupling. I will show that laboratory searches for axions are ideally suited to search for and constrain disformal scalar fields.