Searching for dark fields with atom interferometry (Prof. P. Hamilton)
- Attention! Friday Colloquium
- Date: Dec 9, 2016
- Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Prof. Dr. Paul Hamilton
- UCLA Physics & Astronomy, Los Angeles, USA
- Room: Herbert Walther Lecture Hall
- Host: MPQ
If quantum fields are
responsible for dark matter or dark energy their interactions with normal
matter can lead to new forces. Matter wave interferometry uses atoms as
nearly ideal test masses to measure accelerations with sensitivities so high
that we can now detect forces as weak as the gravitational pull of a centimeter
scale mass. In this talk I will discuss a proof-of-principle experiment
at Berkeley which improved constraints on "chameleon" dark energy
theories by several orders of magnitude. Further improvements could
discover or rule out several types of dark energy models. I will also
discuss techniques being developed at UCLA which will allow us to detect the
interference of trapped atoms in real time giving a new tool for searching for
oscillating forces from dark matter.