2025/11/12 by Banks, Hannah, Carlton, John, Elder, Benjamin +2
#Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.09750
Screened scalars are ubiquitous in many dark-sector models. They give rise to non-trivial fifth forces whilst evading experimental constraints through density-dependent screening mechanisms. We propose equipping a 10 m-scale long-baseline atom interferometer with an annular planar source mass inside the vacuum chamber to search for such screened fifth forces. Two key challenges arise: distinguishing the static fifth force from backgrounds, and isolating it from the plate's Newtonian gravity. We introduce the `Q-flip protocol', which alternates between interferometry sequences to induce controllable time-dependence, aiding signal extraction and de-trending of transient noise. We further develop an in situ calibration procedure to characterise the plate's Newtonian gravity and reach shot-noise-limited sensitivity. We show that our proposal could test theoretically motivated parameter space, advancing existing bounds in chameleon and symmetron screened scalar models by 1 to 1.5 orders of magnitude. Our proposal is directly applicable to forthcoming experiments, such as AION-10 or VLBAI, and is readily extensible to broader theoretical models and longer baselines.