Related papers: Vacuum polarisation effects in impulsive fields
Vacuum birefringence is governed by the amplitude for a photon to flip helicity or polarisation state in an external field. Here we calculate the flip and non-flip amplitudes in arbitrary plane wave backgrounds, along with the induced…
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…
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…
Quantum electrodynamics in strong background fields provides an interesting class of problems for classical and quantum simulation. In this paper we formulate simulations of polarization (helicity) flip for a photon colliding with a…
We derive a simple expression for the photon helicity and polarisation-flip probabilities in arbitrary background fields, in the low energy regime. Taking the background to model a focused laser beam, we study the impact of pulse shape and…
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…
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…
We apply worldline methods to the study of vacuum polarisation effects in plane wave backgrounds, in both scalar and spinor QED. We calculate helicity-flip probabilities to one loop order and treated exactly in the background field, and…
We aim at insights about how localization of the background field impacts nonlinear quantum vacuum signatures probed by photons in purely magnetic, electric and crossed fields. The starting point of our study are the one-loop results for…
The propagation of electromagnetic waves in a Lorentz-symmetry violating scenario where there is a region of polarized vacuum is studied. It turns out that the photon field acquires an interesting polarization state, possibly useful to set…
In vacuum high-intensity lasers can cause photon-photon interaction via the process of virtual vacuum polarization which may be measured by the phase velocity shift of photons across intense fields. In the optical frequency domain, the…
The one-loop "vacuum" Heisenberg-Euler coupling of four electromagnetic fields can lead to interesting collective effects in the collision of two photon clouds, on a time scale orders of magnitude faster than one estimates from the…
These notes provide a pedagogical introduction to the theoretical study of vacuum polarization effects in strong electromagnetic fields as provided by state-of-the-art high-intensity lasers. Quantum vacuum fluctuations give rise to…
By combining an adiabatic approach based on a `locally monochromatic' approximation with a local Hilbert transform, it is demonstrated how vacuum birefringence in the strong field regime can be calculated using a rate approach suitable for…
Vacuum polarization in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which {\it effectively} modify the classical picture of light rays, as the null geodesics of spacetime. These interactions violate the strong equivalence…
A long-standing prediction of quantum electrodynamics, yet to be experimentally observed, is the interaction between real photons in vacuum. As a consequence of this interaction, the vacuum is expected to become birefringent and dichroic if…
The quantum electrodynamical vacuum polarization effects arising in the collision of a high-energy proton beam and a strong, linearly polarized laser field are investigated. The probability that laser photons merge into one photon by…
Vacuum polarisation in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which effectively violate the strong equivalence principle and affect the propagation of light. In the low frequency limit, Drummond and Hathrell have shown…
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…
We reconsider the recently proposed nonlinear QED effect of quantum reflection of photons off an inhomogeneous strong-field region. We present new results for strong fields varying both in space and time. While such configurations can give…