English

Does a Kalb-Ramond field make spacetime optically active

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2011-09-13 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

A spacetime with torsion produced by a Kalb-Ramond field coupled gravitationally to the Maxwell field, in accordance with a recent proposal by two of us (PM and SS), is argued to lead to an optical activity in synchrotron radiation from cosmologically distant radio sources. We suggest that this could qualitatively explain observational data from a large number of radio sources displaying such polarization asymmetry (after eliminating effects of Faraday rotation due to magnetized galactic plasma). Possible implications for heterotic string theory are also outlined.

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0006097,
  title  = {Does a Kalb-Ramond field make spacetime optically active},
  author = {Sayan Kar and Parthasarathi Majumdar and Soumitra Sengupta and Aninda Sinha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0006097},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

Revised version with several additions and deletions