Using nonlinear Breit-Wheeler to test nonlinear vacuum birefringence
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2023-01-04 v1
Abstract
Quantum electrodynamics predicts that the quantum vacuum is birefringent, but due to the very small cross-section this is yet to be confirmed by experiment. Vacuum birefringence arises as the elastic part of photon-photon scattering; the inelastic part is Breit-Wheeler pair-production. We outline how measurements of the photon-polarised nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process can be used to infer a measurement of nonlinear vacuum birefringence. As an example scenario, we calculate the accuracy of such a measurement for parameters anticipated at upcoming laser-particle experiments.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2209.12908,
title = {Using nonlinear Breit-Wheeler to test nonlinear vacuum birefringence},
author = {O. Borysov and B. Heinemann and A. Ilderton and B. King and A. Potylitsyn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.12908},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
8 pages, 7 figures