Related papers: Vacuum birefringence in strong inhomogeneous elect…
Geometric optics effectively describes the propagation of electromagnetic waves when the wavelength is much smaller than the characteristic length scale of the medium, making wave phenomena like diffraction negligible. As a result, light…
We study all-optical signatures of the effective nonlinear couplings among electromagnetic fields in the quantum vacuum, using the collision of two focused high-intensity laser pulses as an example. The experimental signatures of quantum…
Radiative corrections of quantum electrodynamics cause a vacuum threaded by magnetic field to be birefringent. This means that radiation of different polarizations travels at different speeds. Even in the strong magnetic fields of…
Birefringence, the polarization-dependent splitting of light in anisotropic crystals, enables diverse optical phenomena and advanced functionalities such as optical communication, nonlinear optics, and quantum optics. However, conventional…
The fundamental theory of quantum electrodynamics predicts the vacuum to resemble a polarizable medium. This gives rise to effective nonlinear interactions between electromagnetic fields and light-by-light scattering phenomena. We study the…
All experimental evidence {indicates} that the vacuum is not void, but filled with something truly quantum. This is reflected by terms such as {zero-point} fluctuations, and Dirac's sea of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, and last but…
A new model of nonlinear electrodynamics with three parameters is suggested. The phenomena of vacuum birefringence takes place when there is the external constant magnetic field. We calculate the indices of refraction for two polarizations…
When exposed to intense electromagnetic fields, the quantum vacuum is expected to exhibit properties of a polarisable medium akin to a weakly nonlinear dielectric material. Various schemes have been proposed to measure such vacuum…
We describe the principle and the status of the PVLAS experiment which is presently running at the INFN section of Ferrara, Italy, to detect the magnetic birefringence of vacuum. This is related to the QED vacuum structure and can be…
We aim at insights about how localization of the background field impacts nonlinear quantum vacuum signatures probed by photons in purely magnetic, electric and crossed fields. The starting point of our study are the one-loop results for…
Experimental bounds on induced vacuum magnetic birefringence can be used to improve present photon-photon scattering limits in the electronvolt energy range. Measurements with the PVLAS apparatus (E. Zavattini {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. D…
Vacuum polarization, an effect predicted nearly 70 years ago, is still yet to be directly detected despite significant experimental effort. Previous attempts have made use of large liquid-helium cooled electromagnets which inadvertently…
Quantum channels in free-space, an essential prerequisite for fundamental tests of quantum mechanics and quantum technologies in open space, have so far been based on direct line-of-sight because the predominant approaches for…
We show that photons subject to a spatially inhomogeneous electromagnetic field can experience quantum reflection. Based on this observation, we propose quantum reflection as a novel means to probe the nonlinearity of the quantum vacuum in…
Photons impinging on strong electromagnetic fields can change both momentum and helicity state, due to quantum vacuum polarisation. We investigate these effects in the collision of photons with impulsive PP-waves, which describe e.g. the…
Four-photon scattering in nonlinear waveguides is an important physical process that allows photon-pair generation in well defined guided modes, with high rate and reasonably low noise. Most of the experiments to date used the scalar…
The behavior of photons in the presence of Lorentz and CPT violation is studied. Allowing for operators of arbitrary mass dimension, we classify all gauge-invariant Lorentz- and CPT-violating terms in the quadratic Lagrange density…
In this paper we will show that photon-photon collision experiments using extreme lasers can provide measurable effects giving fundamental information about the essence of QED, its Lagrangian. A possible scenario with two counterpropagating…
Vacuum polarization is numerically investigated for the interaction between a GeV electron beam and a counterpropagating ultraintense laser pulse in the quantum radiation dominated-regime (QRDR). We identify a signal of vacuum polarization…
The generation of entanglement between distant atoms via single photons is the basis for networked quantum computing, a promising route to large-scale trapped-ion and trapped-atom processors. Locating the emitter within an optical cavity…