Related papers: A note on polarized light from Magnetars
Compact stars serve as natural systems where matter exists at densities far beyond those achievable in laboratory experiments. Among them, magnetars are expected to possess interior magnetic fields that may reach values of the order of…
Although indirect evidence for the presence of magnetic fields in high-mass stars is regularly reported in the literature, the detection of these fields remains an extremely challenging observational problem. We review the recent…
Massive stars are crucial building blocks of galaxies and the universe, as production sites of heavy elements and as stirring agents and energy providers through stellar winds and supernovae. The field of magnetic massive stars has seen…
Multi-frequency radio polarimetry of the diffuse Galactic synchrotron background gives new viewpoints on the Galactic magnetic field. Rotation measure maps reveal magnetic structures on arcminute to degree scales, such as a ring in…
We propose a novel technique that promises hope of being the first to directly detect a polarization in the quantum electrodynamic (QED) vacuum. The technique is based upon the use of ultra-short pulses of light circulating in low…
New observations of 9 of the brightest northern O stars have been made with the Breger polarimeter on the 0.9~m telescope at McDonald Observatory and the AnyPol polarimeter on the 0.4~m telescope at Limber Observatory, using the…
We present the first circular polarization measurements of circumstellar water masers around a sample of late-type stars. These observations are used to obtain the magnetic field strength in the water maser region with both an LTE and…
Magnetic fields permeate the entire Galaxy and are essential to, for example, the regulation of several stages of the star formation process and cosmic ray transportation. Unraveling its properties, such as intensity and topology, is an…
Polarization provides additional diagnostic opportunities for probing the structured environments of massive stars as well as the illumination of those environments by stars that are not spherical. After a brief overview of polarization…
Magnetic fields are proposed to play an important role in the formation and support of self-gravitating clouds and the formation and evolution of protostars in such clouds. We use R-band linear polarimetry collected for about 12000 stars in…
We propose a novel statistical method to measure cosmic birefringence and demonstrate its power in probing parity violation due to axions. Exploiting an empirical correlation between the integrated radio polarization direction of a spiral…
We introduce birefringence effects within the propagation history of CMB, considering the two cases of a constant effect and of an effect that increases linearly in time, as the rotation of polarization induced by birefringence accumulates…
A ring-laser experiment, similar to the Canterbury ring laser, to detect axion- and {\sc qed}-induced vacuum birefringence is proposed. It uses a slowly modulated magnetic field and a novel polarization geometry. Both axion coupling and…
Optical and infrared continuum polarization from the interstellar medium is known to generally be due to irregular dust grains aligned with the magnetic field. This provides an important tool to probe the geometry and strength of those…
The study of anomalous electromagnetic emission in the sky is the basis of indirect searches for dark matter. It is also a powerful tool to constrain the radiative decay of active neutrinos. Until now, quantitative analyses have focused on…
Various observational properties of Ap/Bp stars have been well-established such as the often-cited 10% incidence rate of strong, organized magnetic fields amongst all A- and B-type stars. However, these inferences have generally been drawn…
This paper studies the impact of vacuum polarization on light propagation in the background of a distorted, deformed compact object. Focusing on a spacetime containing two quadrupole parameters associated with the central object and…
Magnetars, the most strongly magnetised neutron stars, are among the most promising targets for X-ray polarimetry. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the first satellite devoted to exploring the sky in polarised X-rays, has…
The unexpected finding of a strong magnetic field dependence of the dielectric properties of insulating glasses at very low temperatures has been a puzzling problem since its discovery. Several attempts have been made to explain this…
The magnetosphere of strongly magnetized neutron stars, such as magnetars, can sustain large electric currents. The charged particles return to the surface with large Lorentz factors, producing a particle bombardment. We investigate the…