Related papers: Bound on the Photon Charge from the Phase Coherenc…
If the photon possessed an electric charge or a magnetic moment, light waves propagating through magnetic fields would acquire new quantum mechanical phases. For a charged photon, this is an Aharonov-Bohm phase, and the fact that we can…
Using modern high-resolution observations of extragalactic compact radio sources we obtain an estimate of the upper bound on a photon electric charge at the level $e_{\gamma} \lesssim 3 \cdot 10^{-33}$ of elementary charge (assuming the…
If photons had a small electric charge $Q_\gamma$ their path in the galactic magnetic field would be curved, leading to a time delay between photons of different frequency from a distant source. Cocconi's previous application of this…
We use the isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background to place stringent constraints on a possible electrical charge asymmetry of the universe. We find the excess charge per baryon to be $q_{e-p}<10^{-26}e$ in the case of a uniform…
We have arrived at tight constraints on the photon charge, giving comparable bounds, one based on the dominance by dark energy at the present epoch, and the other based on the requirement that early universe nucleosynthesis not be affected…
The papers setting upper bounds on the value of electric charge of the photon are briefly reviewed. The theoretical framework of these bounds is shown to be incomplete. Hence the bounds seem to be unreliable.
The deflection of a laser beam traveling through a modulated electric field is measured using phase-sensitive detection to place an upper bound on photon charge. An upper limit of $10^{-14}e$ is obtained. The experiment involves a number of…
Photon charge has been of interest as a phenomenological testing ground for basic assumptions in fundamental physics. There have been several constraints on the photon charge based on very different considerations. In this paper we put…
If neutrinos carry non-zero electric charge, they would interact directly with photons. This would induce a phase shift along the photon path in the optical experiment. We propose a novel idea to detect this phase shift induced by cosmic…
We propose an atom-interferometry experiment based on the scalar Aharonov-Bohm effect which detects an atom charge at the 10^{-28}e level, and improves the current laboratory limits by 8 orders of magnitude. This setup independently probes…
The magnetic field due to the photon rest mass $m_{ph}$ modifies the standard results of the Aharonov-Bohm effect for electrons, and of other recent quantum effects. For the effect involving a coherent superposition of beams of particles…
If the graviton possesses a non-zero charge $q_g$, gravitational waves (GW) originating from astrophysical sources would experience an additional time delay due to intergalactic magnetic fields. This would result in a modification of the…
Considering the observed anisotropy in cosmic microwave background radiation ($\Delta T/T \leq 10^{-4}$) an upper limit on the electric charge asymmetry over a cosmological scale is found which is several orders more stringent than those…
The effects of a nonzero photon rest mass can be incorporated into electromagnetism in a simple way using the Proca equations. In this vein, two interesting implications regarding the possible existence of a massive photon in nature, i.e.,…
The author's work over the past years has indicated that the photon has a small mass $\sim 10^{-33}eV$. Recent observations from three different viewpoints -- the time lag in cosmic gamma rays with different frequencies, the observation of…
If Lorentz violation exists, it will affect the thresholds for pair creation processes. Lorentz-violating operators that change the maximum velocities of charged particles may increase or decrease the extinction rate of gamma-rays moving…
The canonical Aharonov-Bohm effect is usually studied with time-independent potentials. In this work, we investigate the Aharonov-Bohm phase acquired by a charged particle moving in {\it time-dependent} potentials . In particular, we focus…
The nonlinear propagation of intense incoherent photons in a photon gas is considered. The photon-photon interactions are governed by a pair of equations comprising a wave-kinetic equation for the incoherent photons in the presence of the…
It is argued that if extragalactic magnetic fields are smaller than 2x10^{-12} G the flux of ultra-high energy photons of (a few)x10^{-1} eV cm^{-2}s^{-1}sr^{-1} predicted in the top-down models of UHE CR implies similar flux of the diffuse…
Some models of inelastic dark matter posit the existence of bound states under some new $U(1)'$ gauge symmetry. If this new dark photon kinetically mixes with the standard model photon, then the constituent particles in these bound states…