Douglas J. Shaw
Queen Mary University of London
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Featured researches published by Douglas J. Shaw.
Physical Review D | 2007
David F. Mota; Douglas J. Shaw
We show that, as a result of nonlinear self-interactions, it is feasible, at least in light of the bounds coming from terrestrial tests of gravity, measurements of the Casimir force and those constraints imposed by the physics of compact objects, big-bang nucleosynthesis and measurements of the cosmic microwave background, for there to exist, in our Universe, one or more scalar fields that couple to matter much more strongly than gravity does. These scalar fields behave like chameleons: changing their properties to fit their surroundings. As a result these scalar fields can be not only very strongly coupled to matter, but also remain relatively light over solar-system scales. These fields could also be detected by a number of future experiments provided they are properly designed to do so. These results open up an altogether new window, which might lead to a completely different view of the r\^ole played by light scalar fields in particle physics and cosmology.
Physical Review Letters | 2006
David F. Mota; Douglas J. Shaw
We show that, as a result of nonlinear self-interactions, scalar field theories that couple to matter much more strongly than gravity are not only viable but could well be detected by a number of future experiments provided that they are properly designed to do so.
Physical Review D | 2010
Philippe Brax; Anne-Christine Davis; Douglas J. Shaw; Carsten van de Bruck
We consider the dilaton in the strong string-coupling limit and elaborate on the original idea of Damour and Polyakov whereby the dilaton coupling to matter is minimized and vanishes at a finite value of the dilaton field. Combining this type of coupling with an exponential potential, the effective potential of the dilaton becomes matter density dependent. We study the background cosmology, showing that the dilaton can play the role of dark energy. We also analyze the constraints imposed by the absence of violation of the equivalence principle. Imposing these constraints and assuming that the dilaton plays the role of dark energy, we consider the consequences of the dilaton on large scale structures and, in particular, the behavior of the slip functions and the growth index at low redshift.
Journal of High Energy Physics | 2010
Christian G. Böhmer; James Burnett; David F. Mota; Douglas J. Shaw
We introduce and carefully define an entire class of field theories based on non-standard spinors. Their dominant interaction is via the gravitational field which makes them naturally dark; we refer to them as Dark Spinors. We provide a critical analysis of previous proposals for dark spinors noting that they violate Lorentz invariance. As a working assumption we restrict our analysis to non-standard spinors which preserve Lorentz invariance, whilst being non-local and explicitly construct such a theory. We construct the complete energy-momentum tensor and derive its components explicitly by assuming a specific projection operator. It is natural to next consider dark spinors in a cosmological setting. We find various interesting solutions where the spinor field leads to slow roll and fast roll de Sitter solutions. We also analyse models where the spinor is coupled conformally to gravity, and consider the perturbations and stability of the spinor.
Physical Review D | 2009
Clare Burrage; Anne-Christine Davis; Douglas J. Shaw
We show that a coupling between chameleonlike scalar fields and photons induces linear and circular polarization in the light from astrophysical sources. In this context chameleonlike scalar fields include those of the Olive-Pospelov (OP) model, which describes a varying fine structure constant. We determine the form of this polarization numerically and give analytic expressions in two useful limits. By comparing the predicted signal with current observations we are able to improve the constraints on the chameleon-photon coupling and the coupling in the OP model by over 2 orders of magnitude. It is argued that, if observed, the distinctive form of the chameleon induced circular polarization would represent a smoking gun for the presence of a chameleon. We also report a tentative statistical detection of a chameleonlike scalar field from observations of starlight polarization in our galaxy.
Physical Review Letters | 2009
Clare Burrage; Anne-Christine Davis; Douglas J. Shaw
We demonstrate that the scatter in the luminosity relations of astrophysical objects can be used to search for axionlike particles. This analysis is applied to observations of active galactic nuclei, where we find evidence highly suggestive of the existence of a very light axionlike particle.
Physical Review D | 2007
Philippe Brax; Carsten van de Bruck; Anne-Christine Davis; David F. Mota; Douglas J. Shaw
It was recently argued that the observed PVLAS anomaly can be explained by chameleon field theories in which large deviations from Newtons law can be avoided. Here we present the predictions for the dichroism and the birefringence induced in the vacuum by a magnetic field in these models. We show that chameleon particles behave very differently from standard axionlike particles (ALPs). We find that, unlike ALPs, the chameleon particles are confined within the experimental setup. As a consequence, the birefringence is always bigger than the dichroism in PVLAS-type experiments.
Physical Review D | 2012
Anne-Christine Davis; Eugene A. Lim; Jeremy Sakstein; Douglas J. Shaw
We investigate the effect of modifed gravity with screening mechanisms, such as the chameleon or symmetron models, upon the structure of main sequence stars. We find that unscreened stars can be significantly more luminous and ephemeral than their screened doppelgangers. By embedding these stars into dwarf galaxies, which can be unscreened for values of the parameters not yet ruled out observationally, we show that the cumulative effect of their increased luminosity can enhance the total galactic luminosity. We estimate this enhancement and find that it can be considerable given model parameters that are still under experimental scrutiny. By looking for systematic offsets between screened dwarf galaxies in clusters and unscreened galaxies in voids, these effects could form the basis of an independent observational test that can potentially lower the current experimental bounds on the model independent parameters of these theories by and order of magnitude or more.
Physical Review D | 2007
Philippe Brax; Carsten van de Bruck; Anne-Christine Davis; David F. Mota; Douglas J. Shaw
The best laboratory constraints on strongly coupled chameleon fields come not from tests of gravity per se but from precision measurements of the Casimir force. The chameleonic force between two nearby bodies is more akin to a Casimir-like force than a gravitational one: The chameleon force behaves as an inverse power of the distance of separation between the surfaces of two bodies, just as the Casimir force does. Additionally, experimental tests of gravity often employ a thin metallic sheet to shield electrostatic forces; however, this sheet masks any detectable signal due to the presence of a strongly coupled chameleon field. As a result of this shielding, experiments that are designed to specifically test the behavior of gravity are often unable to place any constraint on chameleon fields with a strong coupling to matter. Casimir force measurements do not employ a physical electrostatic shield and as such are able to put tighter constraints on the properties of chameleons fields with a strong matter coupling than tests of gravity. Motivated by this, we perform a full investigation on the possibility of testing chameleon models with both present and future Casimir experiments. We find that present-day measurements are not able to detect the chameleon. However, future experiments have a strong possibility of detecting or rule out a whole class of chameleon models.
Physical Review D | 2008
Holger Gies; David F. Mota; Douglas J. Shaw
We propose an afterglow phenomenon as a unique trace of chameleon fields in optical experiments. The vacuum interaction of a laser pulse with a magnetic field can lead to a production and subsequent trapping of chameleons in the vacuum chamber, owing to their mass dependence on the ambient matter density. Magnetically induced reconversion of the trapped chameleons into photons creates an afterglow over macroscopic timescales that can conveniently be searched for by current optical experiments. We show that the chameleon parameter range accessible to available laboratory technology is comparable to scales familiar from astrophysical stellar energy-loss arguments. We analyze quantitatively the afterglow properties for various experimental scenarios and discuss the role of potential background and systematic effects. We conclude that afterglow searches represent an ideal tool to aim at the production and detection of cosmologically relevant scalar fields in the laboratory.