PPC 2018: XII International Conference on Interconnections between Particle Physics and Cosmology

Atomic physics tests of dark matter and dark energy

20 Aug 2018, 12:00

30m

RAI-G-041 (Zürich)

Low energy precision experiments

Speaker

Paul Hamilton (University of California, Los Angeles (US))

Description

Atomic physicists have spent decades developing tools to gain complete quantum control of atoms and ions. These tools have used them to make ever increasing precision measurements - the most prominent example being atomic optical clocks which can now measure frequencies to ${10}^{-19}$ precision. Recently there has been increasing interest in leveraging these precision tools to look for small effects from various dark matter and dark energy models. In this talk I will discuss a couple examples. First I will discuss how precision force measurements using atom interferometry can be used to constrain various scalar field models proposed as candidates for dark energy and dark matter. Second I will discuss a new experiment using laser cooled radioactive cesium atoms to search for sterile neutrinos through total energy and momentum reconstruction.

Presentation materials

PPC 8-18-18.pdf

PPC 8-18-18.pptx