Related papers: Magnetars as Laboratories for Strong Field QED
Astrophysical compact objects, such as magnetars, neutron star mergers, etc, have strong electromagnetic fields beyond the Schwinger field ($B_c = 4.4 \times 10^{13}\, {\rm G}$). In strong electric fields, electron-positron pairs are…
Recent ultra-intense lasers of subcritical fields and proposed observations of the x-rays polarization from highly magnetized neutron stars of supercritical fields have attracted attention to vacuum birefringence, a unique feature of…
Highly magnetized neutron stars have magnetic fields of order of the critical field and can lead to measurable QED effects. We consider the Goldreich-Julian pulsar model with supercritical magnetic fields, induced subcritical electric…
In a recent paper it is claimed that vacuum birefringence has been experimentally observed for the first time by measuring the degree of polarization of visible light from a Magnetar candidate, a neutron star with a magnetic field…
The quantum electrodynamics (QED) theory predicts that the quantum vacuum becomes birefringent in the presence of ultra-strong magnetic fields -- a fundamental effect yet to be directly observed. Magnetars, isolated neutron stars with…
Strong QED has attracted attention recently partly because many astrophysical phenomena have been observed to involve electromagnetic fields beyond the critical strength for electron-positron pair production and partly because terrestrial…
The interaction of high energy particles with atomic axes and planes allows to observe in crystal various effects predicted by the quantum electrodynamics of phenomena in strong electromagnetic field. In particular, the effect of…
In the presence of strong magnetic fields, the vacuum becomes a birefringent medium. We show that this QED effect couples the direction of the polarization of photons leaving the NS surface, to the direction of the magnetic field along the…
In the presence of strong magnetic fields, the vacuum becomes a birefringent medium. We show that this QED effect decouples the polarization modes of photons leaving the NS surface. Both the total intensity and the intensity in each of the…
Radiative corrections of quantum electrodynamics cause a vacuum threaded by magnetic field to be birefringent. This means that radiation of different polarizations travels at different speeds. Even in the strong magnetic fields of…
The response of the QED vacuum in an asymptotically large electromagnetic field is studied. In this regime the vacuum energy is strongly influenced by the vacuum polarization effect. The possible interaction between the virtual…
We study the response of the QCD vacuum to strong magnetic fields, using a potential model for the quark-antiquark interaction. We find that production of spin-polarized u-ubar pairs is energetically favorable for fields B > B_crit \sim 10…
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…
Some astrophysical objects are supposed to have very strong electromagnetic fields above the critical strength. Quantum fluctuations due to strong electromagnetic fields modify the Maxwell theory and particularly electric fields make the…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts that in a strong electric field, electron-positron pairs are produced by the Schwinger process, which can be interpreted as quantum tunnelling through the Coulomb potential barrier. If magnetic monopoles…
The interaction between gravitational and electromagnetic waves in the presence of a static magnetic field is studied. The field strength of the static field is allowed to surpass the Schwinger critical field, such that the quantum…
The magnetospheres of magnetars, a class of highly magnetized neutron stars, host magnetic fields exceeding the Schwinger limit, where Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) becomes nonlinear. In such environments, QED scattering processes are…
We study electron-positron pair creation {from} the Dirac vacuum induced by a strong and slowly varying electric field (Schwinger effect) which is superimposed by a weak and rapidly changing electromagnetic field (dynamical pair creation).…
We review the results in our recent works on the generation of strong magnetic fields in compact stars driven by the parity violating electroweak interactions between background fermions. The cases of a neutron star, a hybrid star, and a…
Strong magnetic fields in magnetospheres of neutron stars (especially magnetars) and other astrophysical objects may release their energy in violent, intense episodes of magnetic reconnection. While reconnection has been studied…