The State of the Art in Constraining Axion-to-Nucleon Coupling and Non-Newtonian Gravity from Laboratory Experiments

• Main Authors: Vladimir M. Mostepanenko, Galina L. Klimchitskaya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-09-01
• Series: Universe
• Subjects: non-Newtonian gravity; Yukawa-type forces; interaction of axions with nucleons; constraints; measurements of the Casimir force; laboratory experiments
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/6/9/147

Constraints on the Yukawa-type corrections to Newton’s gravitational law and on the coupling constant of axionlike particles to nucleons obtained from different laboratory experiments are reviewed and compared. The constraints on non-Newtonian gravity under discussion cover the wide interaction range from nanometers to millimeters and follow from the experiments on neutron scattering, measuring the Casimir force and Cavendish-type experiments. The constraints on the axion-to-nucleon coupling constant following from the magnetometer measurements, Cavendish-type experiments, Casimir physics, and experiments with beams of molecular hydrogen are considered, which refer to the region of axion masses from <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><msup><mn>10</mn><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>10</mn></mrow></msup></semantics></math></inline-formula> to 200 eV. Particular attention is given to the recent constraints obtained from measuring the Casimir force at nanometer separation distance between the test bodies. Several proposed experiments focussed on constraining the non-Newtonian gravity, axionlike particles and other hypothetical weakly interacting particles, such as chameleons and symmetrons, are discussed.