Related papers: PVLAS: probing vacuum with polarized light
Ultra-sensitive measurement of the magneto-optical rotation, due to interaction of linearly-polarized light passing through room-temperature Rb 85 atoms, in response to change in longitudinal magnetic field (\delta B_z ) is demonstrated…
Precision experiments exploiting low-energy photons may yield information on particle physics complementary to experiments at high-energy colliders, in particular on new very light and very weakly interacting particles, predicted in many…
We investigate the ground-state Hanle effect in alkali-metal vapor irradiating by a resonant elliptically polarized light wave. The magneto-optical resonances are observed as a change in the ellipticity parameter of the light wave…
Astrophysical sources of energetic gamma rays provide the right conditions for maximal mixing between (pseudo)scalar (axion-like) particles and photons if their coupling is as strong as suggested by the PVLAS claim. This is independent of…
It has been recently suggested that the vacuum magnetic dichroism observed by the PVLAS experiment could be explained by the pair production of a new light, m ~0.1 eV, millicharged, q ~ 3 10^{-6} e, fermions. In addition, it has been…
Spin-exchange relaxation free alkali-metal magnetometers typically operate in the regime of high optical density, presenting challenges for simple and efficient optical pumping and detection. We describe a high-sensitivity Rb magnetometer…
Elliptically polarized laser pulses (EPLPs) are widely applied in many fields of ultrafast sciences, but the ellipticity~($\varepsilon$) has never been in situ measured in the interaction zone of the laser focus. In this work, we propose…
Polarization wiggling is an observational effect of a gravitational field on the polarization of electromagnetic radiation traversing it. We find that in linear gravity, the polarization wiggle rate contributions from scalar, vector and…
We describe a gyroscope that measures rotation based on the effects of the rotation on the polarization of light. Rotation induces a differential phase shift in the propagation of left- and right-circularly polarized light and this phase…
We describe a technique for mapping the spatial variation of static electric, static magnetic, and rf magnetic fields using a pulsed atomic or molecular beam. The method is demonstrated using a beam designed to measure the electric dipole…
A circularly polarized laser beam is used to levitate and control the rotation of microspheres in high vacuum. At low pressure, rotation frequencies as high as 6 MHz are observed for birefringent vaterite spheres, limited by centrifugal…
Light Pseudoscalar Bosons (LPBs) coupled to two photons are predicted by many realistic extensions of the Standard Model and give rise to birefringence and dichroism in a light beam travelling in an external magnetic field. These effects…
Although experimental efforts have been active for about 30 years now, a direct laboratory observation of vacuum magnetic birefringence, an effect due to vacuum fluctuations, still needs confirmation. Indeed, the predicted birefringence of…
Quantifying the optical chirality of a sample requires the precise measurement of the rotation of the plane of linear polarisation of the transmitted light. Central to this notion is that the sample needs to be exposed to light of a defined…
In very intense electromagnetic fields, the vacuum refractive index is expected to be modified due to nonlinear quantum electrodynamics (QED) properties. Several experimental tests using high intensity lasers have been proposed to observe…
A new experiment to measure vacuum magnetic birefringence (VMB), the OVAL experiment, is reported. We developed an original pulsed magnet that has a high repetition rate and applies the strongest magnetic field among VMB experiments. The…
We describe a new table-top electrostatic storage ring concept for $30$ keV polarized ions at frozen spin condition. The device will ultimately be capable of measuring magnetic fields with a resolution of 10$^{-21}$ T with sub-mHz…
We demonstrate a pump-probe scheme in which an atomic vapor is optically pumped with circularly polarized light and probed with a vector vortex beam. The pump induces a macroscopic magnetization in the medium, which gives rise to…
The PVLAS experiment has recently claimed evidence for an axion-like particle in the milli-electron-Volt mass range with a coupling to two photons that appears to be in contradiction with the negative results of the CAST experiment…
Forthcoming radio surveys will include full polarisation information, which can be potentially useful for weak lensing observations. We propose a new method to measure the (integrated) gravitational field between a source and the observer,…