Related papers: Causality and Superluminal Light
Subvacuum effects arise in quantum field theory when a classically positive quantity, such as the local energy density, acquires a negative renormalized expectation value. Here we investigate the case of states of the quantized…
One of the principal aspects through which the effects of quantum gravity are hoped to manifest is the possible modification of the dispersion relation for electromagnetic (e-m) waves. By combining (i) the symmetry reduced approaches to…
Field theories whose full action is Lorentz invariant (or diffeomorphism invariant) can exhibit superluminal behaviors through the breaking of local Lorentz invariance. Quantum induced superluminal velocities are well-known examples of this…
We investigate the appearance of closed timelike curves in quotients of plane waves along spacelike isometries. First we formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for a quotient of a general spacetime to preserve stable causality. We…
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…
We study propagation of high-frequency electromagnetic waves in a curved spacetime. We demonstrate how a modification of the standard geometric optics allows one to include the helicity dependent corrections into the equations of motion of…
We propose a generalisation of the local causality principle of space-time, asserting that it holds for all regimes of motion, including superluminal motions. It assumes the existence of a countably infinite set of metrical null cone…
Superfocusing confines light within subwavelength structures, breaking the diffraction limit. Structures with spatial singularities, such as metallic cones, are crucial to enable nanoscale focusing, leading to significant advancements in…
One may believe that front velocities of waves in a given theory coincide with the UV limit of phase velocities for any dispersion relations. This implies that IR physics is irrelevant to the discussion of propagation speed of waves. We…
It is usually assumed that a healthy EFT should not allow superluminal propagation. In the presence of gravity, however, the notion of superluminality becomes subtle, since there is no invariant way to compare with an underlying Minkowski…
The propagation of light-pulse with negative group-velocity in a nonlinear medium is studied theoretically. We show that the necessary conditions for these effects to be observable are realized in a three-level $\Lambda$-system interacting…
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…
The vacuum polarization in an external gravitational field due to one loop electron-positron pair and one loop millicharged fermion-antifermion pair is studied. Considering the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) radiation and gravitational…
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…
Central to the development of any new theory is the investigation of the observable consequences of the theory. In the search for quantum gravity, research in phenomenology has been dominated by models violating Lorentz invariance (LI) --…
With the help of the Seiberg-Witten map, one can obtain an effective action of a deformed QED from a noncommutative QED. Starting from the deformed QED, we investigate the propagation of photons in the background of electromagnetic field,…
We describe how causality and energy-momentum conservation constrain the superhorizon behaviour of perturbation variables in a general FRW spacetime. The effect of intrinsic curvature upon the horizon scale is discussed and `white noise'…
Bessel X-waves, or Bessel beams, have been extensively studied in last years, especially with regard to the topic of superluminality in the propagation of a signal. However, in spite of many efforts devoted to this subject, no definite…
General relativity provides an appropriate framework for addressing the issue of sub- or superluminality as an apparent effect. Even though a massless particle travels on the light cone, its average velocity over a finite path measured by…
We analyse in detail the reshaping mechanism leading to apparently "superluminal" advancement of a wave packet traversing a classically forbidden region. In the coordinate representation, a barrier is shown to act as an effective…