Related papers: A note on polarized light from Magnetars
A small fraction of intermediate-mass main sequence (A and B type) stars have strong, organised magnetic fields. The large majority of such stars, however, show no evidence for magnetic fields, even when observed with very high precision.…
Polarization offers a unique view in the physical processes of astrophysical jets. We report on optical circular polarization observations of two famous blazars, namely 3C 279 and PKS 1510-089, at high linearly polarized states. This is the…
In the presence of strong magnetic fields near pulsars, the QED vacuum becomes a birefringent medium due to nonlinear QED interactions. Here, we explore the impact of the effective photon-photon interaction on the polarization evolution of…
The quantum electrodynamical vacuum polarization effects arising in the collision of a high-energy proton beam and a strong, linearly polarized laser field are investigated. The probability that laser photons merge into one photon by…
The magnetic field plays an important role in every stage of the star-formation process from the collapse of the initial protostellar core to the star's arrival on the main sequence. Consequently, the goal of this science case is to explore…
Double-resonance optically pumped magnetometers are an attractive instrument for unshielded magnetic field measurements due to their wide dynamic range and high sensitivity. Use of linearly polarised pump light creates alignment in the…
Recently, non-zero rotation angle $\beta=0.30^\circ\pm0.11^\circ$ $(68\%\text{ C.L.})$ [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{128}, no.9, 091302 (2022)] has been reported for linear polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is…
Recent studies have highlighted the frequent applications of structured light modes in optically pumped atomic magnetometers. In this work, we theoretically explore how a Poincar\'e beam probes an optically polarized atomic medium.…
Approximately 7% of massive stars host stable surface magnetic fields that are strong enough to alter stellar evolution through their effect on the stellar wind. It is therefore crucial to characterize the strength and structure of these…
Magnetic fields may play a crucial role in setting the initial conditions of massive star and star cluster formation. To investigate this, we report SOFIA-HAWC+ $214\:\mu$m observations of polarized thermal dust emission and high-resolution…
After decades of efforts, optical long-baseline interferometry has become a mainstream observational technique in terms of operation robustness and user friendliness. Interferometry has opened a new observational window, enabling…
The interior of a neutron star is likely to be predominantly a mixture of superfluid neutrons and superconducting protons. This results in the quantisation of the star's magnetic field into an array of thin fluxtubes, producing a…
It is well-known that the Heisenberg-Euler-Schwinger effective Lagrangian predicts that a vacuum with a strong static electromagnetic field turns birefringent. We propose a scheme that can be implemented at the planned FCC-ee, to measure…
We review the methods used to test for the existence of cosmological birefringence, i.e. a rotation of the plane of linear polarization for electromagnetic radiation traveling over cosmological distances, which might arise in a number of…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to search for parity-violating processes like that predicted by a Chern-Simons coupling to a light pseudoscalar field. Such an interaction rotates $E$ modes into $B$…
One of the manifestations of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV) is vacuum birefringence, which leads to an energy-dependent rotation of the polarization plane of linearly polarized photons arising from an astrophysical source. Here we use…
Magnetic fields have been detected on stars across the H-R diagram and substellar objects either directly by their effect on the formation of spectral lines, or through the activity phenomena they power which can be observed across a large…
Magnetars are the strongest magnets in the present universe and the combination of extreme magnetic field, gravity and density makes them unique laboratories to probe current physical theories (from quantum electrodynamics to general…
We present an analytical model of a magnetar as a high density magnetized quark bag. The effect of strong magnetic fields (B > 5 x 10^{16} G) in the equation of state is considered. An analytic expression for the Mass-Radius relationship is…
A new experiment to measure vacuum magnetic birefringence (VMB), the OVAL experiment, is reported. We developed an original pulsed magnet that has a high repetition rate and applies the strongest magnetic field among VMB experiments. The…