Chameleon Field Theories

TL;DR

Chameleon field theories involve environment-dependent scalar fields affecting gravity, with recent results limiting their cosmological impact and establishing bounds on their quantum stability and experimental detectability.

Contribution

This paper reviews recent theoretical no-go theorems on chameleon cosmology and analyzes quantum stability constraints, providing bounds relevant for experimental tests.

Findings

Chameleons have a maximum force range of about Mpc today.

Quantum corrections impose an upper mass bound of 0.0073 eV for gravitational strength coupling.

Fifth force experiments can test nearly all classical chameleon theories with controlled quantum corrections.

Abstract

Chameleons are light scalar fields with remarkable properties. Through the interplay of self-interactions and coupling to matter, chameleon particles have a mass that depends on the ambient matter density. The manifestation of the fifth force mediated by chameleons therefore depends sensitively on their environment, which makes for a rich phenomenology. In this article, we review two recent results on chameleon phenomenology. The first result a pair of no-go theorems limiting the cosmological impact of chameleons and their generalizations: i) the range of the chameleon force at cosmological density today can be at most ~Mpc; ii) the conformal factor relating Einstein- and Jordan-frame scale factors is essentially constant over the last Hubble time. These theorems imply that chameleons have negligible effect on the linear growth of structure, and cannot account for the observed cosmic acceleration except as some form of dark energy. The second result pertains to the quantum stability of chameleon theories. We show how requiring that quantum corrections be small, so as to allow reliable predictions of fifth forces, leads to an upper bound of m < 0.0073 (\rho/ 10 g cm^{-3})^{1/3} eV for gravitational strength coupling, whereas fifth force experiments place a lower bound of m>0.0042 eV. An improvement of less than a factor of two in the range of fifth force experiments could test all classical chameleon field theories whose quantum corrections are well-controlled and couple to matter with nearly gravitational strength regardless of the specific form of the chameleon potential.