Related papers: Subvacuum effects on light propagation
A strong light pulse propagating in a nonlinear Kerr medium produces a change in the refractive index, which makes light travel at different speeds inside and outside the pulse. By tuning the pulse velocity, an analog black hole horizon can…
A plane monochromatic wave propagates in vacuum at the velocity of c. However, wave packets limited in space and time are used to transmit energy and information. Here it has been shown based on the wave approach that the on-axis part of…
Using the path-integral formalism, we show that photons possess a nontrivial quantum metric in momentum space. We derive the semiclassical action and equations of motion by taking into account the quantum metric. In media with a spatially…
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…
It is well known that although the group velocity of structured light pulses propagating in vacuum can be subluminal or superluminal, the upper limit of the energy flow velocity is c, the speed of light in vacuum. This inequality can be…
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…
The extreme electromagnetic or gravitational fields associated with some astrophysical objects can give rise to macroscopic effects arising from the physics of the quantum vacuum. Therefore, these objects are incredible laboratories for…
When photons propagate in vacuum they may fluctuate into matter pairs thus allowing the vacuum to be polarised. This linear effect leads to charge screening and renormalisation. When exposed to an intense background field a nonlinear effect…
The problem of quantizing the radiation field inside a nonlinear dielectric is studied. Based on the quantization of radiation in a linear dielectric which includes absorption and dispersion, we extend the theory in order to treat also…
We discuss quantum effects in the diffusion process which is used to describe the shape evolution from the touching configuration of fusing two nuclei to a compound nucleus. Applying the theory with quantum effects to the case where the…
We show that QED nonlinear effects imply a phase correction to the linear evolution of electromagnetic waves in vacuum. We provide explicit solutions of the modified Maxwell's equations for the propagation of a superposition of two plane…
As generally known, the speed of propagation of light in solid state bodies can be different from the speed of light in vacuum. That the mere presence of electric or magnetic fields in the vacuum can suffice to influence the speed of light,…
In classical physics the energy density of a field, such as the electromagnetic field, is always positive. However, in quantum field theory it has been shown that the energy density can be negative. There are restrictions, called the…
In this report we show that vacuum is a nonlinear optical medium and we discuss what are the optical phenomena that should exist in the framework of the standard model of particle physics. We pay special attention to the low energy limit.…
One of the predictions of quantum gravity phenomenology is that, in situations where Planck-scale physics and the notion of a quantum spacetime are relevant, field propagation will be described by a modified set of laws. Descriptions of the…
That light propagating in a gravitational field gets frequency-shifted is one of the basic consequences of any metric theory of gravity rooted in the equivalence principle. At the same time, also a time dependent material's refractive index…
Dispersion properties of metals and propagation of quantum bulk plasmon in the high photon energy regime are studied. The nonlocal dielectric permittivity of a metal is determined by the quantum plasma effects and is calculated by applying…
The nonlinear interaction between intense laser light and a quantum plasma is modeled by a collective Dirac equation coupled with the Maxwell equations. The model is used to study the nonlinear propagation of relativistically intense laser…
We investigate the interplay between gravity and the quantum coherence present in the state of a pulse of light propagating in curved spacetime. We first introduce an operational way to distinguish between the overall shift in the pulse…
The microscopic processes underlying electro-optic sampling of quantum-vacuum fluctuations are discussed, leading to the interpretation of these experiments in terms of an exchange of virtual photons. With this in mind it is shown how one…