Propagation of light in area metric backgrounds
High Energy Physics - Theory
2009-01-28 v2
Abstract
The propagation of light in area metric spacetimes, which naturally emerge as refined backgrounds in quantum electrodynamics and quantum gravity, is studied from first principles. In the geometric-optical limit, light rays are found to follow geodesics in a Finslerian geometry, with the Finsler norm being determined by the area metric tensor. Based on this result, and an understanding of the non-linear relation between ray vectors and wave covectors in such refined backgrounds, we study light deflection in spherically symmetric situations, and obtain experimental bounds on the non-metricity of spacetime in the solar system.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0711.3771,
title = {Propagation of light in area metric backgrounds},
author = {Raffaele Punzi and Frederic P. Schuller and Mattias N. R. Wohlfarth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.3771},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18pp, no figures, Journal version