Bound on the Photon Charge from the Phase Coherence of Extragalactic Radiation
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2011-11-10 v3
Abstract
If the photon possessed a nonzero charge, then electromagnetic waves traveling along different paths would acquire Aharonov-Bohm phase differences. The fact that such an effect has not hindered interferometric astronomy places a bound on the photon charge estimated to be at the 10^(-32) e level if all photons have the same charge and 10^(-46) e if different photons can carry different charges.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0703126,
title = {Bound on the Photon Charge from the Phase Coherence of Extragalactic Radiation},
author = {Brett Altschul},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0703126},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
8 pages, new bound added, version appearing in Phys. Rev. Lett