Related papers: Superluminality and Pair-Production
Like light, gravitational waves can be gravitationally lensed by massive astrophysical objects. Strong gravitational lensing by galaxies and galaxy clusters is anticipated to become observable in the coming years. This phenomenon will…
The possibility that around some astrophysical objects there are non-static magnetic fields of enormous intensity suggests that in these situations real particles may be produced. The slowness of the variation is compensated by the huge…
A novel ultra-bright high-intensity source of X-ray and gamma radiation is suggested. It is based on the double Doppler effect, where a relativistic flying mirror reflects a counter-propagating electromagnetic radiation causing its…
We study the pair-production process in the presence of two counterpropagating linearly polarized short laser pulses. By means of a nonperturbative technique, we take into account the full coordinate dependence of the external field going…
The $e^+e^-$ pair production by a probe photon traversing a linearly polarized laser pulse is treated as generalized nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process. For short laser pulses with very few oscillations of the electromagnetic field we find…
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…
Emission of photon pairs by metal-dielectric interface in case of a superluminally propagating laser-induced nonlinear polarization is considered. Using oblique incidence of the laser wave it is possible to tune frequencies of generated…
Binary neutron star mergers are believed to eject significant masses with a diverse range of velocities. Once these ejected materials begin to be decelerated by a homogeneous medium, relativistic electrons are mainly cooled down by…
Little is known about dark matter beyond the fact that it does not interact with the standard model or itself, or else does so incredibly weakly. A natural candidate, given the history of no-go theorems against their interactions, are…
We discuss the conditions under which plane electromagnetic and gravitational waves can be amplified by a rotating black hole due to superradiant scattering. We show, in particular, that amplification can occur for low-frequency waves with…
In an earlier paper the author expounded an interferometer scheme to communicate classical data over an entangled quantum channel. We return to this concept to show that the laws of Quantum Mechanics are not violated and that the device is…
Light springs are space-time beams that have a helical wavepacket. Due to this special property, light springs result into a rotating pulse when intercepting a plane lying orthogonal to their propagation direction. Associated to this, we…
We analyze the transparency of a thin film of low refractive index (an optical glue or a bonding layer) placed between higher-index media and forming an opto-pair. Examples include a semiconductor light-emitting diode with attached lens or…
Backflow is a counter-intuitive phenomenon in which a forward propagating quantum particle propagates locally backwards. The actual counter-propagation property associated with this delicate interference phenomenon has not been observed to…
Spirals in multiphoton pair production are revisited by two counter-rotating fields with time delay for different cycles in pulse. Novel findings include that for subcycle fields, the remarkable spiral structure in the momentum spectrum can…
Superpositions of coherent light waves typically interfere. We present superpositions of up to six plane waves which defy this expectation by having a perfectly homogeneous mean square of the electric field. For many applications in optics…
Theoretical and numerical wave propagation analysis of an oscillating electric dipole is presented. The results show that upon creation at the source, both the longitudinal electric and transverse magnetic fields propagate superluminally…
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has released high-precision data for cosmic rays, and has verified an excess of positrons relative to expectations from cosmic ray interactions in the interstellar medium. An exciting and well-known…
Diffraction gratings synthetically moving at trans-luminal velocities contain points where wave and grating velocities are equal. We show these points can be understood as a series of optical event horizons where wave energy can be trapped…
When a light bulb is turned on, light moves away from it at speed $c$, by definition. When light from this bulb illuminates a surface, however, this illumination front is not constrained to move at speed $c$. A simple proof is given that…