English

Photon Splitting in Strongly Magnetized Plasma

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

The process of photon splitting, becomes allowed in the presence of strong magnetic field. We calculate the influence of magnetized plasma on the photon splitting absorption coefficient. We calculate the refraction coefficients and polarization vectors with the inclusion of the vacuum terms at an arbitrary value of the magnetic field, and then find photon splitting matrix element taking into account the terms that vanish in vacuum, but may be nonzero in the presence of plasma. We find the photon splitting rate in plasma with the density typical for a neutron star star atmosphere and identify a region of the parameter space where the plasma effects are important.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9811152,
  title  = {Photon Splitting in Strongly Magnetized Plasma},
  author = {Tomasz Bulik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9811152},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

18 pages LaTeX, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Acta Astronomica

R2 v1 2026-07-22T09:43:49.071Z