Dilaton-induced open quantum dynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a dilaton scalar field influences quantum dynamics of a probe, revealing potential experimental signatures like frequency shifts that could constrain dilaton models in cosmology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel path integral approach to compute open quantum dynamics induced by dilaton fluctuations, linking theoretical predictions to experimental tests.

Findings

Frequency shifts in quantum probes can be used to constrain dilaton parameters.

Dilaton-induced effects are detectable in matter wave interferometry experiments.

The study provides a method to exclude large parts of dilaton parameter space.

Abstract

In modern cosmology, scalar fields with screening mechanisms are often used as explanations for phenomena like dark energy or dark matter. Amongst a zoo of models, the environment dependent dilaton, screened by the Polyakov-Damour mechanism, is one of the least constrained ones. Using recently developed path integral tools for directly computing reduced density matrices, we study the open quantum dynamics of a probe, modelled by another real scalar field, induced by interactions with an environment comprising fluctuations of a dilaton. As the leading effect, we extract a correction to the probe's unitary evolution, which can be observed as a frequency shift. Assuming the scalar probe to roughly approximate a cold atom in matter wave interferometry, we show that comparing the predicted frequency shifts in two experimentally distinct setups has the potential to exclude large parts of the dilaton parameter space.