Chameleon Fields: Awaiting Surprises for Tests of Gravity in Space

We present a novel scenario where a scalar field acquires a mass which depends on the local matter density: the field is massive on Earth, where the density is high, but is essentially free in the solar system, where the density is low. All existing tests of gravity are satisfied. We predict that near-future satellite experiments could measure an effective Newton's constant in space different from that on Earth, as well as violations of the equivalence principle stronger than currently allowed by laboratory experiments.

Figure 1

The chameleon effective potential $V_{\mathrm{e}\mathrm{f}\mathrm{f}}$ (solid curve) is the sum of a scalar potential $V(\varphi )$ (dashed curve) and a density-dependent term (dotted curve).

Figure 2

Example of solution with thin shell.

Figure 3

Example of solution without thin shell.