Related papers: Vacuum birefringence detection in all-optical scen…
We introduce a laser heterodyne polarimeter designed for the precision measurement of sub $\mu\mathrm{rad}$ differential phase shifts due to birefringence. The polarimeter will be used in an initial testbed for a potential future vacuum…
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…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts that the quantum vacuum is birefringent, but due to the very small cross-section this is yet to be confirmed by experiment. Vacuum birefringence arises as the elastic part of photon-photon scattering; the…
We present an in-situ method to measure the birefringence of a single vacuum window by means of microwave spectroscopy on an ensemble of cold atoms. Stress-induced birefringence can cause an ellipticity in the polarization of an initially…
Absorption and dispersion of probe photons in the field of a high-intensity circularly polarized laser wave are investigated. The optical theorem is applied for determining the absorption coefficients in terms of the imaginary part of the…
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…
The invention of laser immediately enabled us to detect nonlinearities of photon interaction in matter, as manifested for example by Franken et al.'s detection of second harmonic generation and the excitation of the Brillouin forward…
We study vacuum birefringence and x-ray photon scattering in the head-on collision of x-ray free electron and high-intensity laser pulses. Resorting to analytical approximations for the numbers of attainable signal photons, we analyze the…
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…
In the present study, we consider the effects of vacuum birefringence and dichroism in strong electromagnetic fields. According to quantum electrodynamics, the vacuum state exhibits different refractive properties depending on the probe…
We propose a measurement of laser-induced vacuum birefringence through the use of pulsed lasers coupled to femtosecond optical enhancement cavities. This measurement technique features cavity-enhanced pump and probe pulses, as well as an…
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…
We describe the principle and the status of the PVLAS experiment which is presently running at the INFN section of Ferrara, Italy, to detect the magnetic birefringence of vacuum. This is related to the QED vacuum structure and can be…
The sensitivity of future gravitational wave interferometers is expected to be limited through-out the detection band by quantum vacuum fluctuations, which can be reduced by quantum non-demolition methods such as squeezed vacuum injection.…
All-optical experiments at the high-intensity frontier offer a promising route to unprecedented precision tests of quantum electrodynamics in strong macroscopic electromagnetic fields. So far, most theoretical studies of all-optical…
We consider birefringent (i.e., polarization changing) scattering of x-ray photons at the superposition of two optical laser beams of ultra-high intensity and study the resonant contributions of axions or axion-like particles, which could…
The fundamental theory of quantum electrodynamics predicts the vacuum to resemble a polarizable medium. This gives rise to effective nonlinear interactions between electromagnetic fields and light-by-light scattering phenomena. We study the…
High power short pulse lasers provide a promising route to study the strong field effects of the quantum vacuum, for example by direct photon-photon scattering in the all-optical regime. Theoretical predictions based on realistic laser…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts that the vacuum must behave as a nonlinear optical medium: the speed of light should be modified when the vacuum is stressed by intense electromagnetic fields. This optical phenomenon has not yet been…
Phase-sensitive detection is the essential projective measurement for measurement-based continuous-variable quantum information processing. The bandwidth of conventional electrical phase-sensitive detectors is up to several gigahertz, which…