Related papers: HEWES: Heisenberg-Euler Weak-Field Expansion Simul…
The interaction of two counter-propagating electromagnetic waves in a vacuum is analyzed within the framework of the Heisenberg-Euler formalism in quantum electrodynamics. The nonlinear electromagnetic wave in the quantum vacuum is…
The photon polarization tensor is the central building block of an effective theory description of photon propagation in the quantum vacuum. It accounts for the vacuum fluctuations of the underlying theory, and in the presence of external…
We investigate photon merging and splitting processes in inhomogeneous, slowly varying electromagnetic fields. Our study is based on the three-photon polarization tensor following from the Heisenberg-Euler effective action. We put special…
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…
The QED vacuum polarization in external monochromatic plane-wave electromagnetic fields is calculated with spatial and temporal variations of the external fields being taken into account. We develop a perturbation theory to calculate the…
The focus of these lectures is on the quantum vacuum subjected to classical electromagnetic fields. To this end we explicitly derive the renowned Heisenberg-Euler effective action in constant electromagnetic fields in a rather pedagogical…
The self-consistent modeling of vacuum polarization due to virtual electron-positron fluctuations is of relevance for many near term experiments associated with high intensity radiation sources and represents a milestone in describing…
We study two counter-propagating electromagnetic waves in the vacuum within the framework of the Heisenberg-Euler formalism in quantum electrodynamics. We show that the non-linear field equations decouple for ordinary wave case and can be…
From an effective field theory of electromagnetism in vacuum including all lowest-order nonlinear terms consistent with Lorentz invariance and locality of photon/photon interactions, we derive an effective medium description of strong…
Recent simulations show that very large electric and magnetic fields near the kilo Tesla strength will likely be generated by ultra-intense lasers at existing facilities over distances of hundreds of microns in underdense plasmas. Stronger…
Direct detection of vacuum fluctuations and analysis of sub-cycle quantum properties of the electric field are explored by a paraxial quantum theory of ultrafast electro-optic sampling. The feasibility of such experiments is demonstrated by…
Radiative corrections to electronic structure are characterized by perturbative expansions in $\alpha$ and $Z\alpha$, where $\alpha$ is the fine-structure constant and $Z$ is the nuclear charge. A formulation of the leading-order…
Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed…
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…
High order harmonic (HOH) generation by interacting extremely intense electromagnetic waves in the quantum vacuum is investigated within the framework of the Heisenberg-Euler formalism. We consider here the process in the lowest order of a…
Vacuum polarization corrections to the energy levels of bound electrons are calculated using a perturbative path integral formalism. We apply quantum electrodynamics in a framework which treats the strong binding nuclear field to all…
We implement a longstanding proposal by Weisskopf to apply virtual polarization corrections to the in/out external fields in study of the Euler-Heisenberg-Schwinger effective action. Our approach requires distinguishing the electromagnetic…
We outline a general formalism for treating vacuum polarization phenomena within an effective field expansion. The coupling between source charges and virtual fields is examined from the perspectives of electrostatic potentials, induced…
We study the effective interactions of external electromagnetic fields induced by fluctuations of virtual particles in the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics. Our main focus is on these interactions at two-loop order. We discuss in detail…
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…