We discuss the contribution of axion-like excitations (ALE) to the vacuum birrefringence in the limit $m_A \gtrsim ω$, where $m_A$ is the mass of the excitation and $ω$ the energy of test photons interacting with an external (intense) magnetic field. The relevance of this term with respect to the QED contribution depends on the ratio $g_A/m_A$ and, from present bounds on the mass and the coupling constant $g_A$, we find that in the present low energy regime, it ranges from $10^{-14}$ to $10^2$ suggesting an interesting alternative to explore.
The magnetized relativistic Fermi and Bose gases are studied at finite temperature and density.In the case of the Fermi gas, the contribution to the magnetization from the vacuum becomes dominant for high magnetic fields, when the thermal contribution saturates. In the case of the charged Bose gas, the (paramagnetic) vacuum--magnetization becomes dominant when the gas changes from a diamagnetic to a paramagnetic behaviour. We furthermore find that the scalar--QED effective coupling constant for a weak non--zero external magnetic field is a decreasing function of the temperature.
Properties and different representations of the Uehling potential are investigated. Based on these properties and by using our formulas for the Fourier transform of the Uehling potential we have developed the new analytical, logically closed and physically transparent procedure which can be used to evaluate the lowest-order vacuum polarization correction to the cross sections of a number of QED processes, including the Mott electron scattering, bremsstrahlung, creation and/or annihilation of the $(e^{-}, e^{+})-$pair in the field of a heavy Coulomb center, e.g., atomic nucleus.
We discuss in this paper the vacuum Cherenkov radiation in the $z=2$ Lifshitz electrodynamics. The improved ultraviolet behavior, in terms of higher spatial derivatives, and the renormalizable couplings, due to the time-space anisotropic scaling, present in the Lifshitz setting are extremely important in fulfilling the physical constraints in order to this vacuum process to happen. We evaluate in details the instantaneous rate of energy loss for a charge, and also analyze the emission of very soft photons in this framework.
Vacuum birefringence is governed by the amplitude for a photon to flip helicity or polarisation state in an external field. Here we calculate the flip and non-flip amplitudes in arbitrary plane wave backgrounds, along with the induced spacetime-dependent refractive indices of the vacuum. We compare the behaviour of the amplitudes in the low energy and high energy regimes, and analyse the impact of pulse shape and energy. We also provide the first lightfront-QED derivation of the coefficients in the Heisenberg-Euler effective action.
We present the results of analytical calculations of the 3-loop contributions to the asymptotic photon vacuum polarization function, in the on shell scheme, and of the 4-loop contributions to the on shell QED beta-function. These are used to evaluate various 4-loop and 5-loop contributions to the muon anomaly. Our analytical contributions to (g-2)_μdiffer significantly from previous numerical results. A very recent numerical re-evaluation of 4-loop muon-anomaly contributions has yielded results much closer to ours.
The higher order quantum electrodynamics (QED) effect for vacuum pair production has been searched without success since 1954. In this paper, we show that the lowest order QED calculations for lepton pair vacuum production in heavy-ion collisions are about 20$\%$ higher than the combined world-wide data with a seven sigma-level of significance and the corresponding higher order QED results are consistent with data. We claim the discovery of higher order effect for the QED pair production, which settles the dust of previous debates for several decades. The verification of higher order QED effec…
Using analytical methods, a nonpertubative vacuum is constructed recursively in the field theory for the open bosonic string. Evidence suggests it corresponds to the Lorentz-invariant endpoint of tachyon condensation on a D25-brane. The corresponding string field is a twisted squeezed state.
Recently it has been shown that the vacuum state in QED is infinitely degenerate. Moreover a transition among the degenerate vacua is induced in any nontrivial scattering process and determined from the associated soft factor. Conventional computations of scattering amplitudes in QED do not account for this vacuum degeneracy and therefore always give zero. This vanishing of all conventional QED amplitudes is usually attributed to infrared divergences. Here we show that if these vacuum transitions are properly accounted for, the resulting amplitudes are nonzero and infrared finite. Our construc…
The one-loop vacuum polarization tensor is computed in QED with an external constant, homogeneous magnetic field at finite temperature. The Schwinger proper-time formalism is used and the computations are done in Euclidian space. The well-known results are recovered when the temperature and/or the magnetic field are switched off and the effect of the magnetic field on the Debye screening is discussed.
It is demonstrated that the nonlinear, and as yet unobserved, QED effect of slowing down light by application of a strong magnetic field may be observable with large laser interferometers like for instance LIGO or GEO600.
A numerical estimative error of the magnitude of the vacuum polarization effect due to electron-positron by a factor of $10^3$ in [PRL97(2006)100403; 269901(E)] invalidates the study carried in this work in its present context.
In this paper we represent nonperturbative calculation for one-loop Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) vacuum birefringence in presence of strong magnetic field. The dispersion relations for electromagnetic wave propagating in strong magnetic field point to retention of vacuum birefringence even in case when the field strength greatly exceeds Sauter-Schwinger limit. This gives a possibility to extend some predictions of perturbative QED such as electromagnetic waves delay in pulsars neighbourhood or wave polarization state changing (tested in PVLAS) to arbitrary magnetic field values. Such expansio…
Recent improvements in the low energy e+e- annihilation data and their influence on the determination of the hadronic contribution to the running of the QED fine structure constant at m_Z are discussed. Using CMD-2 and KLOE measurements in the rho region we obtain Delta alpha(5)_had(s) = 0.02758 +/- 0.00035 at s = m_Z^2.
The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon is one of the most fundamental observables. It has been measured experimentally with a very high precision and on theory side the contributions from perturbative QED have been calculated up to five-loop level by numerical methods. Contributions to the muon anomalous magnetic moment from certain diagram classes are also accessible by alternative methods. In this paper we present the evaluation of contributions to the QED corrections due to insertions of the vacuum polarization function at five-loop level.
Recent results on the vacuum polarization induced by a thin string of magnetic flux lead us to suggest an analogue of the Copenhagen `flux spaghetti' QCD vacuum as a possible mechanism for avoiding the divergence of perturbative QED, thus permitting consistent completion of the full, nonperturbative theory. The mechanism appears to operate for spinor, but not scalar, QED.
The contributions to the $g-2$ of the muon from some eighth-order (four-loop) graphs containing one-loop and two-loop vacuum polarization insertions have been evaluated analytically in QED perturbation theory, expanding the results in the ratio of the electron to muon mass ${(m_e / m_μ)}$. The results agree with the numerical evaluations and the asymptotic analytical results already existing in the literature.
We extend Schwinger's ideas regarding sonoluminescence by explicitly calculating the Bogolubov coefficients relating the QED vacuum states associated with changes in a dielectric bubble. Sudden (non-adiabatic) changes in the refractive index lead to an efficient production of real photons with a broadband spectrum, and a high-frequency cutoff that arises from the asymptotic behaviour of the dielectric constant.
The string-inspired technique is used for the calculation of vacuum polarisation tensors in constant electromagnetic fields. In the first part of this series, we give a detailed exposition of the method for the case of the QED one-loop N-photon amplitude in a general constant electromagnetic background field. The two-point cases are calculated explicitly, leading to compact representations for the constant field vacuum polarisation tensors for both scalar and spinor QED.
Within the QED effective action approach, we study the propagation of low-frequency light at finite temperature. Starting from a general effective Lagrangian for slowly varying fields whose structure is solely dictated by Lorentz covariance and gauge invariance, we derive the light cone condition for light propagating in a thermalized QED vacuum. As an application, we calculate the velocity shifts, i.e., refractive indices of the vacuum, induced by thermalized fermions to one loop. We investigate various temperature domains and also include a background magnetic field. While low-temperature ef…
The contributions to the g-2 of the muon from some tenth-order (five-loop) graphs containing one-loop and two-loop vacuum polarization insertions have been evaluated analytically in QED perturbation theory, expanding the results in the ratio of the electron to muon mass (m_e /m_μ). Some results contain also terms known only in numerical form. Our results agree with the renormalization group results already existing in the literature.
Within the framework of effective action QED, we derive the light cone condition for homogeneous non-trivial QED vacua in the geometric optics approximation. Our result generalizes the ``unified formula'' suggested by Latorre, Pascual and Tarrach and allows for the calculation of velocity shifts and refractive indices for soft photons travelling through these vacua. Furthermore, we clarify the connection between the light velocity shift and the scale anomaly. This study motivates the introduction of a so-called effective action charge that characterizes the velocity modifying properties of the…
We use an analytic form for the Heisenberg-Euler Lagrangian to calculate the birefringent and dichroic properties of the vacuum for arbitrarily strong wrenchless fields. PACS : 12.20.Ds, 42.25.Lc 97.60.Jd, 98.70.Rz
We consider -- within QED(2) -- the backreaction to the Schwinger pair creation in a time dependent, spatially homogeneous electric field. Our focus is the depletion of the external field as a quench and the subsequent long-term evolution of the resulting electric field. Our numerical solutions of the self consistent, fully backreacted dynamical equations exhibit a self-sustaining oscillation of both the electric field and the pair number depending on the coupling strength.
In spatially structured strong laser fields, quantum electrodynamical vacuum behaves like a nonlinear Kerr medium with modulated third-order susceptibility where new coherent nonlinear effects arise due to modulation. We consider the enhancement of vacuum polarization and magnetization via coherent spatial vacuum effects in the photon-photon interaction process during scattering of a probe laser beam on parallel focused laser beams. Both processes of elastic and inelastic four wave-mixing in structured QED vacuum accompanied with Bragg interference are investigated. The phase-matching conditio…
We study all-optical signatures of the effective nonlinear couplings among electromagnetic fields in the quantum vacuum, using the collision of two focused high-intensity laser pulses as an example. The experimental signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearities are encoded in signal photons, whose kinematic and polarization properties differ from the photons constituting the macroscopic laser fields. We implement an efficient numerical algorithm allowing for the theoretical investigation of such signatures in realistic field configurations accessible in experiment. This algorithm is based on a v…
A knot-theoretic explanation is given for the rationality of the quenched QED beta function. At the link level, the Ward identity entails cancellation of subdivergences generated by one term of the skein relation, which in turn implies cancellation of knots generated by the other term. In consequence, each bare three-loop diagram has a rational Laurent expansion in the Landau gauge, as is verified by explicit computation. Comparable simplification is found to occur in scalar electrodynamics, when computed in the Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau formalism.
New processes associated with the nonlinear optical properties of the electromagnetic vacuum, as predicted by quantum electrodynamics are described. We consider the presence of a static and a rotating magnetic field. The cases of harmonic generation and two different types of sideband cascades are considered. First order and second order effects with respect to the external magnetic field are discussed in detail. Possible experimental configurations using ultra-intense lasers are compared with the alternative use of cw lasers in stable optical cavities.
Quantum fluctuations in the QED vacuum generate non-linear effects, such as peculiar induced electromagnetic fields. In particular, we show here that an electrically neutral particle, possessing a magnetic dipole moment, develops an induced electric dipole-type moment with unusual angular dependence, when immersed in a quasistatic, constant external electric field. The calculation of this effect is done in the framework of the Euler-Heisenberg effective QED Lagrangian, corresponding to the weak field asymptotic expansion of the effective action to one-loop order. It is argued that the neutron …
Vacuum polarization mediated by quark loops is susceptible to external electromagnetic fields as well as to the QCD vacuum structure. Employing the stochastic vacuum model, we calculate the modification of the one-loop Euler-Heisenberg effective action due to stochastic color fields with the Fock-Schwinger technique. Our results indicate nonperturbative light quark contributions of the same order of magnitude as the usual QED terms. Various theoretical and experimental implications are discussed in this progress report.
We investigate the effective action of 2+1 dimensional charged spin 1/2 fermions and spin 0 bosons in the presence of a $U(1)$ gauge field. We evaluate terms in an expansion up to second order in derivatives of the field strength, but exactly in the mass parameter and in the magnitude of the nonvanishing constant field strength. We find that in a strong uniform magnetic field background, space-derivative terms lower the energy, and there arises an instability toward inhomogeneous magnetic fields.
We investigate in detail the stimulated photon emission in pulse-shaped Laguerre-Gauss beams of arbitrary mode decomposition within the framework of Euler-Heisenberg effective theory. We elaborate on the analytic structure of the photon emission amplitude and identify its dominant and sub-dominant parts by analyzing each signature's phase scaling. We identify three distinct nonlinear signatures: the orbital angular momentum (OAM) flip ($\ell:1 \rightarrow -1$) , higher harmonic generation ($\ell:1 \rightarrow 2$) and harmonic reduction ($\ell:1 \rightarrow 0$). We estimate signal photon yield …
We use recently evaluated radiative and nonperturbative corrections to production of heavy quarks by a vector current to give very precise theoretical calculations of the high energy ($t^{1/2}\geq \sqrt{2}$ GeV) imaginary part of the photon vacuum polarization function, ${\rm Im}Π(t)$. This allows us to improve the corresponding contributions to the muon (or any other lepton) $g-2$ anomaly and to the running QED constant on the $Z$, $\barα_{\rm QED}(M_Z)$. This decreases the error in the evaluations by a factor between two and six for the high energy contribution, and by some 50\% for the over…
A charged parallel plate capacitor will create particle-antiparticle pairs by the Schwinger process and discharge over time. We consider the full quantum discharge process in 1+1 dimensions including backreaction, when the electric field interacts with massless charged fermions. We recover oscillatory features in the electric field observed in a semiclassical analysis and find that the amplitude of the oscillations falls off as t^{-1/2} and that stronger coupling implies slower decay. Remarkably, Ohm's law applies to the vacuum and we evaluate the quantum electrical conductivity of the vacuum …
We study chiral symmetry breaking in $\rm QED_3$ with $N_f$ flavors of four-component fermions. A closed system of Schwinger-Dyson equations for fermion and photon propagators and the full fermion-photon vertex is proposed, which is consistent with the Ward-Takahashi identity. A simplified version of that set of equations is reduced (in nonlocal gauge) to the equation for a dynamical fermion mass function, where the one-loop vacuum polarization with dynamically massive fermions has been taken into account. The linearized equation for the fermion mass function is analyzed in real space. The ana…
Three--loop contributions to massive QED vacuum polarization are evaluated by a combination of analytical and numerical techniques. The first three Taylor coefficients, at small $q^2$, are obtained analytically, using $d$\/--dimensional recurrence relations. Combining these with analytical input at threshold, and at large $q^2$, an accurate Padé approximation is obtained, for all $q^2$. Inserting this in the one--loop diagram for the muon anomalous magnetic moment, we find reasonable agreement with four--loop, single--electron--loop, muon--anomaly contributions, recently re--evaluated by Kinos…
Since the work of Sauter, and Heisenberg, Euler and Köckel, it has been understood that vacuum polarization effects in quantum electrodynamics (QED) predict remarkable new phenomena such as light-light scattering and pair production from vacuum. However, these fundamental effects are difficult to probe experimentally because they are very weak, and they are difficult to analyze theoretically because they are highly nonlinear and/or nonperturbative. The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project offers the possibility of a new window into this largely unexplored world. I review these ideas, alo…
Quantum Eletrodynamics (QED) is considered as the most successful of all physical theories. It can predict numerical values of physical quantities to a spectacular degree of accuracy. However, from the very early days it has been known that, in QED, there are two important problems which are linked with the very foundation of the theory. In 1952, Dyson put forward strong argumnts to suggest that the perturbation seires in quantum electrodynamics can not be convergent. Just three years latter, in 1955, Landau argued that the effective running coupling constant in QED has a pole (Landau singular…
In this talk I shall describe an extension of the quantum-vacuum approach to sonoluminescence proposed several years ago by J.Schwinger. We shall first consider a model calculation based on Bogolubov coefficients relating the QED vacuum in the presence of an expanded bubble to that in the presence of a collapsed bubble. In this way we shall derive an estimate for the spectrum and total energy emitted. This latter will be shown to be proportional to the volume of space over which the refractive index changes, as Schwinger predicted. After this preliminary check we shall deal with the physical c…
We show that in the presence of a slowly rotating strong transverse magnetic field there is an infinite spectrum of harmonic wave functions $A_n$ due to the first order QED correction (in $α^2$) given by the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian. The frequency shifts are integer multiples $\pm ω_0 n$ of the magnetic field angular frequency rotation $ω_0=2πν_m$ and the several modes $n$ are coupled to the nearest harmonics $n\pm 1$. This is a new effect due to QED vacuum fluctuations, not exploit before, that can explain, both qualitatively and quantatively, the recent experimental results of the PVLAS c…
We study the electromagnetic properties of a hot medium at temperatures below electron mass. It was observed earlier that the first order hot loop corrections do not affect the electromagnetic properties of hot media due to the absence of self-interaction of photons. However, the second order contributions are found to modify these properties due to the overlapping hot and cold loops. It has also been noticed that the hot loops have to be integrated before the cold ones to establish the order by order cancelation of singularities to ensure renormalizability of the theory. It is also explicitly…
Our aim is to study the electron-positron vacuum pressures in presence of a strong magnetic field $B$. To that end, we obtain a general energy-momentum tensor, depending on external parameters, which in the zero temperature and zero density limit leads to vacuum expressions which are approximation-independent. Anisotropic pressures arise, and in the tree approximation of the magnetic field case, the pressure along $B$ is positive, whereas perpendicular to $B$ it is negative. Due to the common axial symmetry, the formal analogy with the Casimir effect is discussed, for which in addition to the …
The rotation of the polarization vector for light propagating perpendicular to an external constant external magnetic field $B$, is calculated in quantum vacuum, where it leads to different photon eigenmodes of the magnetized photon self-energy tensor for polarizations along and orthogonal to $B$ (Cotton-Mouton effect in QED vacuum). Its analogies and differences with Faraday effect are discussed and both phenomena are calculated for a relativistic electron gas at low densities, by starting from the low energy limit of the photon self-energy eigenvalues in presence of $B$. In the Cotton-Mouton…
The possibility of electron-positron pair creation by an electric field is studied by using only those methods in field theory the predictions of which are confirmed experimentally. These methods include the perturbative method of quantum electrodynamics and the bases of classical electrodynamics. Such an approach includes the back reaction. It is found that the vacuum is always stable, in the sense that pair creation, if occurs, cannot be interpreted as a decay of the vacuum, but rather as a decay of the source of the electric field or as a process similar to bremsstrahlung. It is also found …
At energies much less than the electron mass $m$ the effects of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum due to virtual electron loops can be included by extending the Maxwell Lagrangian by additional non-renormalizable terms corresponding to the Uehling and Euler-Heisenberg interactions. This effective field theory is used to calculate the properties of the QED vacuum at temperatures $T << m$. By a redefinition of the electromagnetic field, the Uehling term is shown not to contribute. The Stefan-Boltzmann energy density is thus found to be modified by a term proportional with $T^8/m^4$ in agreement…
We recall how nearly half a century ago the proposal was made to explore the structure of the quantum vacuum using slow heavy-ion collisions. Pursuing this topic we review the foundational concept of spontaneous vacuum decay accompanied by observable positron emission in heavy-ion collisions and describe the related theoretical developments in strong fields QED.
Electron-positron pair annihilation into a single photon is studied when a second free electron is present. Focussing on the relativistic regime, we show that the photon emitted in the three-lepton interaction may exhibit distinct angular distributions and polarization properties. Moreover, the process can dominate over two-photon annihilation in relativistic electron-positron plasmas of few-MeV temperature. An analogy with three-body recombination of electrons with ions is drawn.
We continue the development of a nonperturbative light-front Hamiltonian method for the solution of quantum field theories by considering the one-photon eigenstate of Lorentz-gauge QED. The photon state is computed nonperturbatively for a Fock basis with a bare photon state and electron-positron pair states. The calculation is regulated by the inclusion of Pauli-Villars (PV) fermions, with one flavor to make the integrals finite and a second flavor to guarantee a zero mass for the physical photon eigenstate. We compute in detail the constraints on the PV coupling strengths that this zero mass …
Several years ago Schwinger proposed a physical mechanism for sonoluminescence in terms of changes in the properties of the quantum-electrodynamic (QED) vacuum state. This mechanism is most often phrased in terms of changes in the Casimir Energy: changes in the distribution of zero-point energies and has recently been the subject of considerable controversy. The present paper further develops this quantum-vacuum approach to sonoluminescence: We calculate Bogolubov coefficients relating the QED vacuum states in the presence of a homogeneous medium of changing dielectric constant. In this way we…
A maximum value for the magnetic field is determined, which provides the full compensation of the positronium rest mass by the binding energy in the maximum symmetry state and disappearance of the energy gap separating the electron-positron system from the vacuum. The compensation becomes possible owing to the falling to the center phenomenon. The maximum magnetic field may be related to the vacuum and describe its structure.
QED is studied at low temperature ($T\ll m$, where $m$ is the electron mass) and zero chemical potential. By integrating out the electron field and the nonzero bosonic Matsubara modes, we construct an effective three-dimensional field theory that is valid at distances $R\gg1/T$. As applications, we reproduce the ring-improved free energy and calculate the Debye mass to order $e^5$.
\\The Bethe-Salpeter equation in a strong magnetic field is studied for positronium atom in an ultra-relativistic regime, and a (hypercritical) value for the magnetic field is determined, which provides the full compensation of the positronium rest mass by the binding energy in the maximum symmetry state. The compensation becomes possible owing to the falling to the center phenomenon. The relativistic form in two-dimensional Minkowsky space is derived for the four-dimensional Bethe-Salpeter equation in the limit of an infinitely strong magnetic field, and used for finding the above hypercritic…
