Related papers: Causality and Micro-Causality in Curved Spacetime
It has been known for a long time that vacuum polarization in QED leads to a superluminal low-frequency phase velocity for light propagating in curved spacetime. Assuming the validity of the Kramers-Kronig dispersion relation, this would…
The effect of vacuum polarization on the propagation of photons in curved spacetime is studied in scalar QED. A compact formula is given for the full frequency dependence of the refractive index for any background in terms of the Van…
It is now well-known that vacuum polarisation in QED can lead to superluminal low-frequency phase velocities for photons propagating in curved spacetimes. In a series of papers, we have shown that this quantum phenomenon is dispersive and…
The causal properties of curved spacetime, which underpin our sense of time in gravitational theories, are defined by the null cones of the spacetime metric. In classical general relativity, it is assumed that these coincide with the light…
Within the low-energy effective field theories of QED and gravity, the low-energy speed of light or that of gravitational waves can typically be mildly superluminal in curved spacetimes. Related to this, small scattering time advances…
Local superluminal photon propagation arises at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha/m_e^2)$ in the Drummond Hathrell (DH) effective action obtained by integrating out the electron in QED coupled to gravity. Whether such superluminality implies a genuine…
This work considers the way that quantum loop effects modify the propagation of light in curved space. The calculation of the refractive index for scalar QED is reviewed and then extended for the first time to QED with spinor particles in…
Vacuum polarisation in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which effectively violate the strong equivalence principle and affect the propagation of light. In the low frequency limit, Drummond and Hathrell have shown…
It is well known that in Lorentz invariant quantum field theories in flat space the commutator of space-like separated local operators vanishes (microcausality). We provide two different arguments showing that this is a consequence of the…
Quantum phenomena such as vacuum polarisation in curved spacetime induce interactions between photons and gravity with quite striking consequences, including the violation of the strong equivalence principle and the apparent prediction of…
The one-loop effects of vacuum polarization induced by untwisted fermions in QED in a nonsimply connected space-time with topology $S^{1}\times R^{3}$ are investigated. It is found that photon propagation in this system is anisotropic,…
We recast the tools of ``global causal analysis'' in accord with an approach to the subject animated by two distinctive features: a thoroughgoing reliance on order-theoretic concepts, and a utilization of the Vietoris topology for the space…
The one-loop effective action for QED in curved spacetime contains equivalence principle violating interactions between the electromagnetic field and the spacetime curvature. These interactions lead to the dependence of photon velocity on…
In this brief report, the microcausility of quantum field theory on spin-induced noncom- mutative spacetime is discussed. It is found that for spacelike seperation the microcausality is not obeyed by the theory generally. It means that…
It is widely held that plane wave spacetimes are causally well behaved which means that they are free from causal pathologies such as closed timelike curves or closed null geodesics. In this paper, we show that one can get closed null…
Vacuum polarization in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which {\it effectively} modify the classical picture of light rays, as the null geodesics of spacetime. These interactions violate the strong equivalence…
Photons propagating in curved spacetime may, depending on their direction and polarisation, have velocities exceeding the ``speed of light'' c. This phenomenon arises through vacuum polarisation in QED and is a tidal gravitational effect…
Recently, various types of regular black hole model are reintroduced as the solution of the Einstein equations coupled with nonlinear electrodynamics (NED). In NED, it is known that photons do not propagate along the null geodesics of the…
The effects of a nonsimply connected spacetime with the topology of $S^{1}\times R^{3}$ in the vacua of QED and gauged-NJL theories are investigated. It is shown that the polarization effects of twisted and untwisted fermions in QED are…
We study quantum electrodynamics (QED) in the light-front dynamical form by using null-plane causal perturbation theory. We establish the equivalence with instant dynamics for the scattering processes, whose normalization allows to…