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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 76: Ultra-cold Atoms, Ions and BEC V (joint session A/Q)
Q 76.5: Talk
Friday, March 6, 2026, 12:15–12:30, N 1
Dark Energy search using atom interferometry in microgravity — •Sukhjovan Singh Gill1, Magdalena Misslisch1, Charles Garcion1, Alexander Heidt2, Ioannis Papadakis3, Christoff Lotz2, Sheng-Wey Chiow4, Nan Yu4, and Ernst Rasel1 — 1Institut für Quantenoptik, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany — 2Institut für Transport- und Automatisierungstechnik, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany — 3Institut für Physik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany — 4Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA
The nature of dark energy is one of the biggest quests of modern physics and is required to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe. In the chameleon theory, a scalar field is proposed that is hidden by a screening effect in the vicinity of bulk masses, thereby making the model consistent with observations. The DESIRE project studies the chameleon field model using BEC of 87Rb atoms as a source in a microgravity environment. The Einstein-Elevator at Leibniz University Hannover provides 4 seconds of microgravity time for multi-loop atom interferometry to search for phase contributions induced by chameleon fields shaped by a changing mass density. This work will further constrain thin-shell models for dark energy by several orders of magnitude. The BEC is transported via Bloch oscillations from the atom chip to the test-mass to perform atom interferometry.
Keywords: Dark Energy; Bose-Einstein Condensate; Atom Interferometry; Microgravity