Strongly Coupled Chameleons and the Neutronic Quantum Bouncer

Philippe Brax, Guillaume Pignol
2011 Physical Review Letters  
We consider the potential detection of chameleons using bouncing ultracold neutrons. We show that the presence of a chameleon field over a planar plate would alter the energy levels of ultra cold neutrons in the terrestrial gravitational field. When chameleons are strongly coupled to nuclear matter, β≳ 10^8, we find that the shift in energy levels would be detectable with the forthcoming GRANIT experiment, where a sensitivity of order one percent of a peV is expected. We also find that an
more » ... ely large coupling β≳ 10^11 would lead to new bound states at a distance of order 2 microns, which is already ruled out by previous Grenoble experiments. The resulting bound, β≲ 10^11, is already three orders of magnitude better than the upper bound, β≲ 10^14, from precision tests of atomic spectra.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.107.111301 pmid:22026655 fatcat:pgf536iq25axpdhdbclenvizo4