Related papers: Etherington's Distance Duality with Birefringence
Modern physics is largely devoted to study conservation laws, such as charge, energy, linear momentum or angular momentum, because they give us information about the symmetries of our universe. Here, we propose to add the relationship…
This paper addresses issues surrounding the concept of fractional quantum mechanics, related to lights propagation in inhomogeneous nonlinear media, specifically restricted to a so called gravitational optics. Besides Schr\"odinger Newton…
We show that in the weak field limit the light deflection alone cannot distinguish between different $R + F[g(\square)R]$ models of gravity, where $F$ and $g$ are arbitrary functions. This does not imply, however, that in all these theories…
By resolving the Riemann curvature relative to a unit timelike vector into electric and magnetic parts, we consider duality relations analogous to the electromagnetic theory. It turns out that the duality symmetry of the Einstein action…
We show that if the visible universe is a membrane embedded in a higher-dimensional space, particles in uniform motion radiate gravitational waves because of spacetime lumpiness. This phenomenon is analogous to the electromagnetic…
Vacuum fluctuations of quantum fields are altered in presence of a strong gravitational background, with important physical consequences. We argue that a non-trivial spacetime geometry can act as an optically active medium for quantum…
Models with extra space-time dimensions produce, tipically, a 4D effective theory whose vacuum is not exactly Lorentz invariant but can be considered a physical medium whose refractive index is determined by the gravitational field. This…
The gravitational wave equation of motion includes direct coupling to the Riemann tensor. The curvature terms are usually neglected, but they can be large at the location of matter particles and impact the angular diameter distance. We…
Electric magnetic duality symmetry is well understood in vacuum. For light propagating through a medium this symmetry is typically broken. We investigate under what conditions duality transformation is preserved in a linear medium and…
We present the second-order gravitational dynamics for a spacetime inhabited by matter fields which feature vacuum birefringence. The derivation follows a perturbative variant of the covariant constructive gravity program, ensuring…
We study the gravitational lensing in the weak field approximation assuming the presence of a plasma and of a magnetic field around a compact gravitational source. The external magnetic field causes the split of the image, as the…
We investigate the gravitational Faraday effect in the Kerr-Newman-Taub-NUT space-time under the weak deflection limit. Contrary to previously stated zero net effect when the source and the observer are remote from the black hole, a…
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…
Modern ether-drift experiments in vacuum could in principle detect the tiny refractive index that, in a flat-space picture of gravity, is appropriate for an apparatus placed on the Earth's surface. In this picture, in fact, if there were a…
Starting from a Hamiltonian description of the photon within the set of Bargmann-Wigner equations we derive new semiclassical equations of motion for the photon propagating in static gravitational field. These equations which are obtained…
Gravitomagnetism characterize phenomena in the weak field limit within the context of rotating systems. These are mainly manifested in the geodetic and Lense-Thirring effects. The geodetic effect describes the precession of the spin of a…
We give precise details to support that observations of gravitational lensing at scales of individual, groups and clusters of galaxies can be understood in terms of non-Newtonian gravitational interactions with a relativistic structure…
By exploring the relationship between the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a gravitational field and the light propagation in a refractive medium, it is shown that, in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, the velocity of…
A moving dielectric appears to light as an effective gravitational field. At low flow velocities the dielectric acts on light in the same way as a magnetic field acts on a charged matter wave. We develop in detail the geometrical optics of…
We show that discretization of spacetime naturally suggests discretization of Hilbert space itself. Specifically, in a universe with a minimal length (for example, due to quantum gravity), no experiment can exclude the possibility that…