Chameleon Mechanism in Inhomogeneous Astrophysical Objects

TL;DR

This paper explores the behavior of the Chameleon scalar field in inhomogeneous astrophysical objects, analyzing how density variations influence the screening mechanism in scalar-tensor theories of gravity.

Contribution

It investigates the impact of inhomogeneity and density on the Chameleon screening mechanism, extending previous models to more realistic astrophysical objects.

Findings

Density affects the scalar field profile in inhomogeneous objects

Thin shell approximation may not be valid for small or inhomogeneous bodies

Additional factors like density influence the approach to solving the Chameleon equation

Abstract

Observational evidence implying the accelerated expansion of the universe has been the motivation to develop various classes of modified gravity theories. One of them uses the so-called "screening mechanism", which is successful in reproducing the observed gravitational behavior in large scales as well as being in agreement with tests of general relativity in the solar system. In this work, we investigate an example of scalar-tensor theories with screening mechanism, namely the profile of a Chameleon field around inhomogeneous astrophysical objects. According to [Khoury and Weltman(2004)], one can define two kinds of approaches applicable to the thin shell and thick shell regimes, that allow for a solution to the Chameleon equation of motion. For sufficiently large objects, the scalar field can be assumed to propagate from a thin shell of the object instead of the whole body, which simplifies the problem. On the other hand, this solution is not practical in small objects. We find that in inhomogeneous objects this is not trivial and at least one more factor, which turns out to be the density, can change the way of approaching this problem.