Higgs production as a probe of dark energy interactions

We study Higgs production under the influence of a light, scalar dark energy field with chameleon-like couplings to matter. Our analysis is relevant for hadron colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider, which are expected to manufacture Higgs particles through weak boson fusion, or associated production with a Z or W. We show that the corrections arising in these models are too small to be observed. This result can be attributed to the gauge invariance of the low energy Lagrangian. As a by-product of our analysis, we provide the first microphysical realization of a dark energy model coupled to the electromagnetic field strength. In models where dark energy couples to all matter species in a uniform manner we are able to give a new, stringent bound on its coupling strength.