Experiment to Detect Dark Energy Forces Using Atom Interferometry.

The accelerated expansion of the universe motivates a wide class of scalar field theories that modify general relativity (GR) on large scales. Such theories require a screening mechanism to suppress the new force in regions where the weak field limit of GR has been experimentally tested. We have used atom interferometry to measure the acceleration of an atom toward a macroscopic test mass inside a high vacuum chamber, where new forces can be unscreened.

Dark Energy after GW170817 Revisited.

We revisit the status of scalar-tensor theories with applications to dark energy in the aftermath of the gravitational wave signal GW170817 and its optical counterpart GRB170817A. At the level of the cosmological background, we identify a class of theories, previously declared unviable in this context, whose anomalous gravitational wave speed is proportional to the scalar equation of motion. As long as the scalar field is assumed not to couple directly to matter, this raises the possibility of compatibility with the gravitational wave data, for any cosmological sources, thanks to the scalar dynamics.

Radiative Screening of Fifth Forces.

We describe a symmetron model in which the screening of fifth forces arises at the one-loop level through the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We show that such a theory can avoid current constraints on the existence of fifth forces but still has the potential to give rise to observable deviations from general relativity, which could be seen in cold atom experiments.

Charge-swapping Q balls.

Q balls are nontopological solitonic solutions to a wide class of field theories that possess global symmetries. Here we show that in these same theories there also exists a tower of novel composite Q-ball solutions where, within one composite Q ball, positive and negative charges coexist and swap at a frequency lower than the natural frequency of an individual Q ball. These charge-swapping Q balls are constructed by assembling Q balls and anti-Q balls tightly such that their nonlinear cores overlap.

Duality and decay of macroscopic F strings.

We study the decay of fundamental string loops of arbitrary size L/min(n,m)≫sqrt[α'], labeled by (n, m; λn, λ[over ¯]m), where n, m correspond to left- and right-mover harmonics and λn, λ[over ¯]m to polarization tensors, and find that a description in terms of the recent coherent vertex operator construction of Hindmarsh and Skliros is computationally very efficient. We primarily show that the decay rates and mass shifts of vertex operators (n, m; λn, λ[over ¯]m) and their "duals" (n, m; λn, λ[over ¯]m*) are equal to leading order in the string coupling, implying, for instance, that decay rates of epicycloids equal those of hypocycloids. We then compute the power and decay rates associated with massless IR radiation for the trajectory (1, 1; λ1, λ[over ¯]1), and find that it is precisely reproduced by the low energy effective theory of Dabholkar and Harvey.

General second-order scalar-tensor theory and self-tuning.

Starting from the most general scalar-tensor theory with second-order field equations in four dimensions, we establish the unique action that will allow for the existence of a consistent self-tuning mechanism on Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker backgrounds, and show how it can be understood as a combination of just four base Lagrangians with an intriguing geometric structure dependent on the Ricci scalar, the Einstein tensor, the double dual of the Riemann tensor, and the Gauss-Bonnet combination. Spacetime curvature can be screened from the net cosmological constant at any given moment because we allow the scalar field to break Poincaré invariance on the self-tuning vacua, thereby evading the Weinberg no-go theorem. We show how the four arbitrary functions of the scalar field combine in an elegant way opening up the possibility of obtaining nontrivial cosmological solutions.