Standard electroweak interactions in gravitational theory with chameleon field and torsion

Abstract

We propose a version of a gravitational theory with the torsion field, induced by the chameleon field. Following Hojman et al. Phys. Rev. D17, 3141 (1976) the results, obtained in Phys. Rev. D90, 045040 (2014), are generalised by extending the Einstein gravity to the Einstein-Cartan gravity with the torsion field as a gradient of the chameleon field through a modification of local gauge invariance of minimal coupling in the Weinberg-Salam electroweak model. The contributions of the chameleon (torsion) field to the observables of electromagnetic and weak processes are calculated. Since in our approach the chameleon-photon coupling constant beta_(gamma) is equal to the chameleon-matter coupling constant beta, i.e. beta_(gamma) = beta, the experimental constraints on beta, obtained in terrestrial laboratories by T. Jenke et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 115105 (2014)) and by H. Lemmel et al. (Phys. Lett. B743, 310 (2015)), can be used for the analysis of astrophysical sources of chameleons, proposed by C. Burrage et al. (Phys. Rev. D79, 044028 (2009)), A.-Ch. Davis et al. (Phys. Rev. D80, 064016 (2009), and in references therein, where chameleons induce photons because of direct chameleon-photon transitions in the magnetic fields.