Probing Strongly Coupled Chameleons with Slow Neutrons

TL;DR

This paper explores novel experimental methods using slow neutrons to detect chameleon particles, which could modify neutron energy levels and phases, offering a promising approach to probe strongly coupled chameleons.

Contribution

It introduces new neutron-based techniques, including interferometry, to detect chameleons, demonstrating their potential competitiveness with existing methods.

Findings

Chameleons cause measurable shifts in neutron energy levels.

Interferometric methods can detect bubble-like chameleon profiles.

Proposed methods are effective for strongly coupled chameleons.

Abstract

We consider different methods to probe chameleons with slow neutrons. Chameleon modify the potential of bouncing neutrons over a flat mirror in the terrestrial gravitational field. This induces a shift in the energy levels of the neutrons which could be detected in current experiments like GRANIT. Chameleons between parallel plates have a field profile which is bubble-like and which would modify the phase of neutrons in interferometric experiments. We show that this new method of detection is competitive with the bouncing neutron one, hopefully providing an efficient probe of chameleons when strongly coupled to matter.