Disformal dark energy at colliders
  Disformally coupled, light scalar fields arise in many of the theories of
dark energy and modified gravity that attempt to explain the accelerated
expansion of the universe. They have proved difficult to constrain with
precision tests of gravity because they do not give rise to fifth forces around
static non-relativistic sources. However, because the scalar field couples
derivatively to standard model matter, measurements at high energy particle
colliders offer an effective way to constrain and potentially detect a
disformally coupled scalar field. Here we derive new constraints on the
strength of the disformal coupling from LHC run 1 data and provide a forecast
for the improvement of these constraints from run 2. We additionally comment on
the running of disformal and standard model couplings in this scenario under
the renormalisation group flow.
