Double-sphere enhanced optomechanical spectroscopy constrains symmetron dark energy

TL;DR

This paper proposes an optomechanical method using levitated nanospheres to detect symmetron dark energy fields, potentially surpassing current laboratory bounds by several orders of magnitude.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optomechanical scheme with two levitated nanospheres to constrain symmetron interactions, enhancing detection sensitivity for screened fifth forces.

Findings

Forecasts improved constraints on symmetron parameters by up to several orders of magnitude.

Demonstrates optomechanical spectroscopy's sensitivity to screened fifth forces.

Shows potential to detect symmetron fields in the 10^{-2} eV to 10^{-4} eV range.

Abstract

Screened scalar fields such as the symmetron provide a viable description of dark energy yet their laboratory detection remains challenging. We propose an optomechanical scheme to constrain symmetron interactions using two optically levitated nanospheres inside a cavity. The symmetron-mediated interaction induces an effective coupling which leads to a measurable splitting in the optomechanical resonance spectrum. We forecast constraints in the regime $\mu \sim 10^{-2}$eV-$10^{-4}$ eV, which shows that this approach can improve existing laboratory bounds by up to several orders of magnitude, demonstrating the sensitivity of optomechanical spectroscopy to screened fifth forces.