Theory Group Seminar, 12 April 2011
Dr. Justin Khoury, University of Pennsylvania
Screening Dark Energy
abstract
This talk will explore the possibility that the dark sector includes new light degrees of freedom (generally scalar fields) that mediate long-range forces on cosmological scales. To ensure consistency with laboratory and solar system tests of gravity, some screening mechanism is necessary to "hide" these degrees of freedom locally. I will focus on two broad classes of screening theories, chameleons and symmetrons, which rely respectively on the scalar field acquiring a large mass or weak coupling in the presence of large ambient matter density. Finally, I will discuss some of the phenomenological/cosmological implications of these theories.