Related papers: Finite Distance Corrections to Vacuum Birefringenc…
Birefringence is one of the fascinating properties of the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in strong electromagnetic fields. The scattering of linearly polarized incident probe photons into a perpendicularly polarized mode provides a…
Geometric optics effectively describes the propagation of electromagnetic waves when the wavelength is much smaller than the characteristic length scale of the medium, making wave phenomena like diffraction negligible. As a result, light…
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…
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…
Motivated by recent experimental initiatives, such as at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), we calculate the birefringent scattering of x-rays at the combined…
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…
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…
Experimental bounds on induced vacuum magnetic birefringence can be used to improve present photon-photon scattering limits in the electronvolt energy range. Measurements with the PVLAS apparatus (E. Zavattini {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. D…
Photons propagating in strong magnetic fields are subject to a phenomenon called the "vacuum birefringence" where refractive indices of two physical modes both deviate from unity and are different from each other. We compute the vacuum…
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…
Nondestructive spin-resolved imaging of ultracold atomic gases requires calculating the differences of the refractive indices seen by two circular probe polarizations. Perfect overlap of the two images, corresponding to two different…
X-ray photons emitted from the surface or atmosphere of a magnetized neutron star is highly polarized. However, the observed polarization may be modified due to photon propagation through the star's magnetosphere. For photon frequencies…
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 focus of this article is on providing compact analytical expressions for the differential number of polarization flipped signal photons constituting the signal of vacuum birefringence in the head-on collision of x-ray free electron…
Magnetars are among the most extreme laboratories in the universe, harboring surface magnetic fields reaching $10^{15}$~G. At these supercritical scales, Maxwell's linear electrodynamics is superseded by Nonlinear Electrodynamics (NLED).…
We study the perspectives of measuring the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence predicted by quantum electrodynamics using an x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) alone. We devise an experimental scheme allowing the XFEL beam to collide with…
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…
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 present an experimental systematics study of the polarimetric method for measuring the vacuum magnetic birefringence based on a pair of rotating half-wave plates. The presence of a systematic effect at the same frequency as the sought…
We calculate the vacuum polarization-induced ellipticity acquired by a linearly polarized laser beam of angular frequency $\bar \omega$ on traversing a region containing a transverse magnetic field rotating with a small angular velocity…