Related papers: The quantum vacuum in electromagnetic fields: From…
We study the effective interactions of external electromagnetic fields induced by fluctuations of virtual particles in the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics. Our main focus is on these interactions at two-loop order. We discuss in detail…
In quantum field theory, the vacuum is a fluctuating medium which behaves as a nonlinear polarizable material. In this article, we perform the first rigorous derivation of the magnetic Euler-Heisenberg effective energy, a nonlinear…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts the vacuum to behave as a non-linear medium, including effects such as birefringence. However, for experimentally available field strengths, this vacuum polarizability is extremely small and thus very hard…
We argue that the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence in strong inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields can be most efficiently analyzed in terms of a vacuum emission process. In this contribution, we exemplarily stick to the case of vacuum…
Quantum field theory predicts a nonlinear response of the vacuum to strong electromagnetic fields of macroscopic extent. This fundamental tenet has remained experimentally challenging and is yet to be tested in the laboratory. A…
The Heisenberg-Euler theory of the quantum vacuum supplements Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism with nonlinear light-light interactions. These originate in vacuum fluctuations, a key prediction of quantum theory, and can be triggered by…
We consider both massive Euler-Heisenberg-like and Euler-Heisenberg-like Electrodynamics in the approximation of the strong-field limit. Our analysis shows that massive Euler-Heisenberg-type Electrodynamics displays the vacuum birefringence…
On this 75th anniversary of the publication of the Heisenberg-Euler paper on the full non-perturbative one-loop effective action for quantum electrodynamics I review their paper and discuss some of the impact it has had on quantum field…
I present a pedagogical review of Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangians, beginning with the original work of Heisenberg and Euler, and Weisskopf, for the one loop effective action of quantum electrodynamics in a constant electromagnetic…
We show that the leading derivative corrections to the Heisenberg-Euler effective action can be determined efficiently from the vacuum polarization tensor evaluated in a homogeneous constant background field. After deriving the explicit…
We explore the perspectives of studying vacuum birefringence at the Gamma Factory. To this end, we assess in detail the parameter regime which can be reliably analyzed resorting to the leading contribution to the Heisenberg-Euler effective…
The interaction of two counter-propagating electromagnetic waves in a vacuum is analyzed within the framework of the Heisenberg-Euler formalism in quantum electrodynamics. The nonlinear electromagnetic wave in the quantum vacuum is…
Birefringence is one of the fascinating properties of the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in strong electromagnetic fields. The scattering of linearly polarized incident probe photons into a perpendicularly polarized mode provides a…
The fermion sector of the pseudo-quantum electrodynamics is integrated functionally to generate a non-linear electrodynamics, that it is called Euler-Heisenberg pseudo-electrodynamics. A non-local Chern-Simons topological term is added to…
Vacuum birefringence is one of the most striking predictions of strong field quantum electrodynamics: Probe photons traversing a strong field region can indirectly sense the applied "pump" electromagnetic field via quantum fluctuations of…
Vacuum fluctuations give rise to effective nonlinear interactions between electromagnetic fields. These generically modify the characteristics of light traversing a strong-field region. X-ray free-electron lasers constitute a particularly…
We use a locally constant field approximation (LCFA) to study the one-loop Heisenberg-Euler effective action in a particular class of slowly varying inhomogeneous electric fields of Lorentzian shape with $0\leq d\leq 4$ inhomogeneous…
We advocate the study of external-field quantum electrodynamics with $N$ charged particle flavors. Our main focus is on the Heisenberg-Euler effective action for this theory in the large $N$ limit which receives contributions from all loop…
We study two counter-propagating electromagnetic waves in the vacuum within the framework of the Heisenberg-Euler formalism in quantum electrodynamics. We show that the non-linear field equations decouple for ordinary wave case and can be…
Our goal is to study optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearities in strong macroscopic electromagnetic fields provided by high-intensity laser beams. The vacuum emission scheme is perfectly suited for this task as it naturally…