Related papers: External Fields as a Probe for Fundamental Physics
Optical signatures of the effective nonlinear couplings among electromagnetic fields in the quantum vacuum can be conveniently described in terms of stimulated photon emission processes induced by strong classical, space-time dependent…
In strong electromagnetic fields, new plasma phenomena and applications emerge, whose modeling requires analytical theories and numerical schemes that I will develop in this thesis. Based on my new results of the classical plasma model, the…
Quantum mechanics is a field often considered very mathematical, abstract, and unintuitive. One way some instructors are hoping to help familiarize their students with these complex topics is to have the students see quantum effects in…
We investigate the physics of quantum reference frames. Specifically, we study several simple scenarios involving a small number of quantum particles, whereby we promote one of these particles to the role of a quantum observer and ask what…
I review the theoretical motivation for varying fundamental couplings and discuss how these measurements can be used to constrain a number of fundamental physics scenarios that would otherwise be inacessible to experiment. As a case study I…
The discovery of the accelerating universe indicates strongly the presence of a scalar field which is not only expected to solve today's version of the cosmological constant problem, or the fine-tuning and the coincidence problems, but also…
We demonstrate that tailored laser beams provide a powerful means to make quantum vacuum signatures in strong electromagnetic fields accessible in experiment. Typical scenarios aiming at the detection of quantum vacuum nonlinearities at the…
We consider the use of a traveling wave probe to continuously measure the quantum state of an atom in free space. Unlike the more familiar cavity QED geometry, the traveling wave is intrinsically a multimode problem. Using an appropriate…
The focus of these lectures is on the quantum vacuum subjected to classical electromagnetic fields. To this end we explicitly derive the renowned Heisenberg-Euler effective action in constant electromagnetic fields in a rather pedagogical…
The study of high energy cosmic rays is a diversified field of observational and phenomenological physics addressing questions ranging from shock acceleration of charged particles in various astrophysical objects, via transport properties…
Understanding physics in domains of critical (quantum unstable) fields requires investigating the classical and quantum particle dynamics at the critical acceleration, $\dot u \to 1$ [natural units]. This regime of physics remains today…
Recent progress in the study of the photon emission from highly-charged heavy ions is reviewed. These investigations show that high-$Z$ ions provide a unique tool for improving the understanding of the electron-electron and electron-photon…
We offer a brief survey of existent and planned experimental tests for quantum gravity. First, we outline the questions we wish to address, and then introduce some of the phenomenological models that are currently used in quantum gravity,…
We study the atom-light interaction in the fully quantum regime, with focus on off-resonant light scattering into a cavity from ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. The detection of photons allows the quantum nondemolition (QND)…
Entanglement and quantum correlations are central to the physics of quantum materials, yet they have remained notoriously difficult to probe experimentally. Probing these phenomena in solids requires quantum optical probes that operate at…
Properties of quantum states have disclosed new and revolutionary technologies, ranging from quantum information to quantum imaging. This last field is addressed to overcome limits of classical imaging by exploiting specific properties of…
The search for dark matter and physics beyond the Standard Model has grown to encompass a highly interdisciplinary approach. In this review, we survey recent searches for light, weakly-coupled particles - axions and dark photons - over the…
Quantum thermodynamics is an emerging research field aiming to extend standard thermodynamics and non-equilibrium statistical physics to ensembles of sizes well below the thermodynamic limit, in non-equilibrium situations, and with the full…
In this work, we provide an overview of how well-established concepts in the fields of quantum chemistry and material sciences have to be adapted when the quantum nature of light becomes important in correlated matter-photon problems.…
Numerous theories have postulated the existence of exotic spin-dependent interactions beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Spin-based quantum sensors, which utilize the quantum properties of spins to enhance measurement precision,…